30 October 2011

Introducing Ernie

My most significant current project is Ernie, and I'll be writing quite a bit about him here.

The name is an extension of ERN-E, or Enhanced Robotic Navigator - Experimental, but I have found Ernie simpler to type.

Inspiration
Ernie is a relatively large robot for a hobby robot.  My design of Ernie is very heavily influenced by Loki created by Dave Shinsel, with other robots also influencing some of my thinking including Pi robot created by Patrick Goebel, and more recently Michael Ferguson's Maxwell.  I also took an interest in Leaf at one point.

Purpose
One of the first things many people ask is "What does it do?" or "What is it for?".  That's a reasonable question without a particularly satisfactory answer.  Ernie is sort of an answer looking for a solution - he is an outlet for my hobby interests - an experimental platform.  My wife would like Ernie to be able to perform some useful household tasks, but unfortunately her wishlist has more to do with popula television science-fiction than tasks currently achievable by any actual robot, let alone one built on a hobby budget.

I'm intending that Ernie be interesting and entertaining.  This is why Ernie will have an expressive face and will have the ability to be steered by remote control. In this I am influenced and impressed by the people that build replica R2-D2 and other astromech droids and by their friends that build replicas of Wall-E.

I hope that he will eventually be capable of tracking a face via a webcam and engage in a semi-intelligent conversation through the merging of a speech-recognition module, a chatbot engine, and a text-to-speech module.  I'm also hoping that I will be able to voice-command Ernie to travel from one room to another autonomously.

In coming posts I'll cover some of the construction of Ernie including my selection of motors, drivetrain, and chassis.  I plan to describe the circuitry and processors on board, and the software that will run on him.  This will include some discussion of programming languages and environments that I have considered and what I am currently using.

This is an early photo of Ernie.  I recycled some cardboard boxes to mock-up a chassis and skin for Ernie to check placements for components such as an LCD panel, arms, drive wheels, an omni-vision system for navigation and a web-cam mounted on a pan-tilt head.

I have since made quite a few changes, but regretably have not been taking too many photos along the way, so I need to start taking images of Ernie as he is currently.

More to come....

Inaugural Post

Welcome to The Electronic Kiwi.

This is a blog about technology - mostly hobby robotics.

I'm a Kiwi - a New Zealander - living in Auckland, New Zealand. I'll be blogging about the robotic and other technology projects I am working on, robots by friends and family, reviews of books and products, cool robotic projects and happenings from around the world, and other assorted stuff.

I've been a professional sofware developer and interested in electronics and robotics for quite a few years. I have assisted with a school Vex competition team and I am currently developing some robotic projects at home together with my children and friends.