Ben's Robosapien -- George School 2008

For his winter term exam, my student Ben Biros programmed a hacked Robosapien to autonomously navigate a tabletop and avoid obstacles. While the Robosapien was designed as a remote-controlled toy, we modified it so the robot will receive commands from an implanted BX-24 brain and RAMB II motherboard. In robotics, the word autonomous means "independent" or "having the ability to operate on one's own".

Robodyssey Systems manufactures the RAMB II motherboard you see here. The robot's brain is NetMedia's BX-24 microcontroller, which is programmed using the BasicX language. I am the author of the world's only BasicX textbook; if you are interested in learning how to program your own robot, see my website at www.basicxandrobotics.com.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• robot
• Robosapien
• infrared
• sensor
• tabletop
• obstacle
• computer
• programming
• autonomous
• BX-24
• BasicX
• George
• School

[ilcamst]

I wish I could hack my v2

[odomc]

You can. Visit Robodyssey's website and then add this to the address bar: "resources/HackAToy/HackARobos­apien1.htm".

[odomc]

@ilcamst

Another way: do a Google search for "Robodyssey Robosapien Hack". Then click on the first link.

[odomc]

@Jakemz51

This Robosapien is not being controlled by the human user. Rather, my student programmed a microcontroller to read a range-finding sensor on its chest to determine if it is too close to the edge of the table. The robot then makes its own intelligent decision to stop and turn. Essentially, the robot is now autonomous.