Brainstorm and Basic Ideas

From the start, we were interested in creating a robotic animal that could interact with people and also move autonomously. The first of our challenges was deciding which animal to make - in our early brainstorming sessions, cats, parrots, snakes, snails, and even llamas came up! Finally we settled upon a dog, because we thought it would have the most features we could think of to implement, as well as have the most appeal to people.

Early ideas!

Robodog has a variety of sensors and motors so that he can move and adapt to his environment, as well as respond to human attention! He walks and stops autonomously using two motors that power his back legs. He avoids getting trapped by obstacles by two switches on his front and back legs that sense when he runs into something so that he can turn away and find a clear path. He responds to noise and touch: if you pat him on the head or neck, where his light sensors are located, he will stop and wag his tail. If you clap your hands loudly, he will bark. You can also feed him, and if you are lucky, he'll digest the food and poop it out! In addition, he can pee if you pressed his nose.

Who We Are

	Carrie I'm a Pre-Med Psychology major. I decided to play with LEGOs this wintersession because I was deprived of them as a child (and maybe the class just happened to sound very interesting). I worked mostly on the structural and mechanical components of the dog (the legs, etc).
	Christina I am a Computer Science major who thought it would be fun to build robots this wintersession! I worked mainly on the structural parts of the dog and the code for the handyboard.
	Zaza I am majoring in Computer Science and am absolutely loving the department. My first love was Biology, which is why I took a particular interest in this course: as a bridge between the two sciences. Little did I know there was so much Physics hidden within the functionality of LEGO. I love dogs but have always had cats as pets. Now I understand why house-training is such a big deal!