Design Objectives

 The Stony Brook Robot Design Team has assumed the following list of objectives for the design of this year’s entry:

• Make components modular wherever possible.
• Minimize complexity through the use of off-the-shelf components.
• Design a robot capable of completing all ten of the decathlon events.
• Compete in all ten events autonomously.
• Draw from the knowledge gained at last year’s competition (i.e.: don’t make the same mistakes twice!).
• Establish a platform that is expandable beyond the scope of the competition.

  The robot will be built with the intention of winning. However, winning is not the only goal; the engineers at the State University of New York at Stony Brook intend to produce a high quality, robust robot explorer. With proper funding, time, and equipment the team will be able to do exactly that.

General Description

After a long period of concept generation and evaluation, the engineers designing the 1997-1998 walking robot decided upon a final physical structure. This concept is roughly based on the biological configuration of a sand crab.

Mechanical Description

Rogue, as mentioned above, is roughly based on the physical structure of a crab. It has a total of six legs, each with two joints capable of individual movement. Each joint will be capable of approximately 400 degrees of rotation, allowing for several different modes of walking. The legs are attached to the body in two groups of three, the sets are attached to the upper and lower sections of the body, respectively. A joint located between the upper and lower sections of the body allows rotation of one set of legs with respect to the other. Turning is accomplished through rotating the raised triplet of legs with respect to set that are in contact with the ground.

Electrical Description

The electronic systems within Rogue will be kept as modular and flexible as possible. The high-level control, such as path planning and motor coordination, will be implemented on a PC-104 bus single-board computer. Low-level control, such as individual motor control, will be handled by simpler microcontrollers. It will be possible to change the implementation at one level of control without affecting that of the other levels.

A specific software architecture will be developed that abstracts each control level. The architecture will consist of a simple command set for inter-level communication. An I²C serial bus will be utilized for communications purposes. This bus offers a great deal of flexibility and expandability. The addition of new devices on the bus is simple and fast.

Rogue will have contact and color sensors on each of the feet. Additional sensors may be added as time and finances permit. This may include CCD cameras, sonar range finders and/or proximity sensors. The design is flexible enough to allow the addition of these devices in the future with minor, if any, impact to the implementation of other systems.