What if Hive Robots can save us from COVID-19 Virus?
COVID-19 Virus is currently causing a major shutdown in many countries at the moment. Businesses activities are on hold. Employers and managers are trying out new ways to manage their workers virtually. Money is being lost, the economy is crashing down. Medical Professionals are risking their lives to safe the world…
Now imagine a world where all of these are done by machines or robots with a human handler or supervisor from the corner of his or her own room, safe with his or her own family. With the advancement in Automation and Robotics, we can move close to this type of world.
On 4th March, the Hive AI & Robotics club at the University of Ibadan, exhibited some of our robots at the Nigeria Institute of Mechanical Engineers (NiMeche) conference. At the exhibition, we had a mix of robots built solely by Hivers and robots built in collaboration with students of the Department of Mechanical Engineering. In total, we had 7 robots on display. A quadcopter and a hexacopter for aerial surveillance, 3 unmanned ground vehicles including our first bot (HiveBot 1.0) and two self-driving car prototypes, an autonomous vacuum cleaner and an autonomous lawnmower.
In an interview with the founder of Hive Robotics & AI club — Erioluwa Morenikeji, he gave more insights about the Hive Robots.
What problem do they solve?
Most of the bots on showcase were built to solve specific problems; some were built for the sole purpose of learning new concepts and for fun! Robotics can tend to be very exciting; an extreme sport to some of us.
The ‘copters and two of our UGVs were built for unmanned aerial and surveillance in UI. We collaborated with 400L students to build a tiny replica of a self-driving car (complete with LIDAR). The vacuum cleaning robot and the autonomous lawn mower were built in collaboration with 400L students of mechanical engineering (self-explanatory problem and solution).
What technologies were used?
We initially built our quadcopter with an Arduino microcontroller as our flight controller and programmed its PID controller and flight algorithms from scratch. We eventually had to port over to an Ardupilot flight controller because of its broad range of functions and its epic GUI. All our ground robots were built using Arduino microcontrollers. We have a LIDAR system on one of our UGVs as stated earlier.
Going into the next semester, we plan to take on bigger challenges and build our robots to solve very important problems in our community and the industry.
What advice will you give a novice venturing into this space?
To everyone who wants to start a hobby or career in robotics, my advice is simple; join Hive.
Can you tell us more about the Hive Club?
The Hive is a community of elite individuals who are dedicated to solving problems of the future by co-learning and co-building Robotic systems and Artificially intelligent agents.
Our mission is to create a network of African students with a sense of responsibility for the technological development of our continent who can and will innovate dynamically in the rapidly evolving fields of Robotics and Artificial Intelligence.
How can one become a member?
Our next recruitment round will run in the second semester of the next academic session. We will release an application form at the end of the first semester. Interested students are encouraged to apply early!
Robots or Humans, when you have to choose, who will you go for?
People often argue that Robots will eventually replace humans in the workplace. I think that this argument, although a logical conclusion given the many benefits of Robotic Process Automation, is wrong. Our jobs as Roboticists is to build bots that will do the jobs that are either too dangerous for humans or too demeaning and/or repetitive for a human. No robot can match the intuition and mental complexity of a human being.
I would definitely choose a human wife over a robotic wife so, yes.
Humans over robots (for now😅)
