Beginners Guide To Robotics- II (Building a Robot)

Building a Robot - Planning ( before you go shopping! )

part 2(Go to part 1, Index page)

“Robots are Machines. And Machines do specific Tasks...” 

“Doing a task” is thus a universal similarity in all robots. Converting the idea into a list of tasks and sub-tasks for the robot is the 2nd step to making a fully functional robot. 

Flying Saucer

Have an idea of a Flying Saucer?

Tasks: 
1. Build a robot that flies without wings or rotors.

2. It should mostly maintain constant distance from ground.

3. Should make a buzzing noise.

4. Should have a light under it that can lift people up and inside it.

5. Should be able to teleport.

Once we have a list of the tasks we want the robot to do, we need to find ways of achieving those tasks. Most of it will involve making or buying of hardware or parts and the rest would be integrating and coding them to do the particular tasks. Like in my example:

# To achieve the first 3 tasks we would need something like a mercury vortex engine that runs on a super-fluid. The fluid would flow inside it at close to light speeds in a kind of a oscillatory looping motion. This would thus use concepts of special relativity to create that kind of motion. The fluid should glow at such speeds which would also partly satisfy the 4th task.

Anti-gravitation engine concept

Super-Fluid Liquid Helium

# The sound would be produced by some speaker system or maybe the engine would make that kind of a sound.

"Portal Gun Profile" By Volpin Props licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0

# The 5th task can be easily achieved by using a mega version of the portal gun (By Aperture Science Laboratories) to create a bigger portal and in higher dimensions. This gun may use concepts of quantum entanglement at large distances.

Quantum Entanglement Concept

# Now the 4th task is kinda useless (and unsafe). Nobody would enter a machine with no comfort or safety or recreation. And I'm really not interested in making the robot go around at light speeds gulping people with its Anti-Gravity Levitator. So sorry, you are not getting a solution to this task!

So this is how we should think and create a list of the tasks we want the robot to do. Simultaneously find out how we can achieve them and what parts we need. This basically marks the end of the planning stage of the robot. Which you're supposed to do before you go for robot-shopping. 

Notice the underlined words. Those are the key terms I was talking about which you need to Google, research and maybe even buy(parts). You'll get to know more of them as you read and get deeper into robotics.

Continue to part 3 

[EDIT]
Wait! Did I just give away the recipe to make a flying Saucer? Ah! It doesn't matter as long as it would be safe as I didn't give away the tech for the people gulping paarrt....Uh?!..Oh!
Its just an example to illustrate my points please ignore the possibilities of such a machine ....
[/EDIT]  

Thank you for reading !
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