Upgrading the SplinterBot

Abstract

Today, we are seeing the beginning of the robotics revolution. In the United States, the company iRobot has developed robots to vacuum the house and scrub the floors. In Japan, Mitsubishi has designed an autonomous robot to live with families, with the ability to take the initiative as well as take commands.2 One of the allures of robotics is the fusion of many academic areas, from mechanical engineering to artificial intelligence. However, this combination of academic fields also leads to the difficulty in teaching robotics. Noticing the future demand for robotics, MIT and other top universities have started teaching undergraduate robotics courses to educate new roboticists. In the fall of 2005, the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab launched the second part in a two term class, Robotics: Systems and Science II (RSSII). The main goal of this class was to have the students apply all the principles learned over the previous semester on solving a complicated problem. The challenge for the term was to have the robot for the course, SplinterBot, autonomously navigate around the MIT campus and retrieve the plastic bricks scattered around. Once SplinterBot returned to base, it would build a simple structure with the bricks it collected.