My last completed project in High School was pioneering a walking robot for my teacher. This was a robot that walked straight until it hit something in front of it, detected by the antennas, which then it would walk backwards and sideways a few steps, and go forward again. The way the antennas worked was that they created a closed circuit when the metal tube made contact with the long thin spring, ie when the antenna bent because of objects in front of it.
He had attended a workshop where the designer of a walking robot showcased his robot and my teacher wanted to make one himself so he could teach students how to make one. The electronics class was very open in the sense that students could choose their own projects. I took the opportunity to create this robot according to the design given by my teacher because his wouldn’t work. I built it from scratch and learned many things in the process.
The first thing I made by was circuit board. The designer of the robot had provided my teacher with a schematic in Circuit Maker. My teacher had the old fashioned way to etch a circuit board, he taught me to print the circuit using a toner printer and using a heat press to glue to toner from the paper to the copper board. Then, I placed the circuit board in acid for about 30 minutes while the uncovered copper was dissolved off the board.
Assembling the board was very challenging because it was the first time I was faced with such a complex circuit, the previous circuits were built using mainly resistors and had about 10-15 components. Now, I had to read the schematic and learn to read diodes and capacitors. The sockets for both the IC’s and resistors were also challenging because I had to learn to solder multiple joints one after the other very quickly or the sockets would fall out of place.
The body was also fun to build as I had to but my own pieces with a saw mill. I also had to solder capacitors to the motors to reduce electrical noise which I didn’t even know what it was at the time. I did some researched and accepted that they were quite essential to the success of the project. The antennas were also difficult to make because I had to make sure they weren’t so sensitive that the robot walking naturally would trigger the antennas and not too stiff so it would be stuck in a wall before they were triggered.
I am happy to say mine worked exactly the way we wanted to after many adjustments to the body. The weigh distribution was hard to perfect because there were too many variables, where the legs touched the ground, weather the batteries were placed near the front or near the back, or weather the front or back was closer to the ground. To date, this is my most memorable assignment/project/paper/event that happened in high school.
