Let There Be Light

Welcome back to my grand robotic experiment. I have begun in earnest the task of completing a UC Berkeley / edX course in digital interfaces in which I am attempting to build some kind of robot as a means to learning how digital things interface with real life things.

It’s been a week and a bit and I must say that so far things are going pretty damn swimmingly. It has been time consuming and I’m way behind schedule but I’ve completed the first module of seven and I’m feeling pretty happy so far — I made my first circuit, I made a second circuit with more stuff, I programmed a microcontroller and I took the online exam for module 1. Read on to find out how it went!

But first, some robot news!

It seems that there’s a hotel opening in Japan which will be partially staffed by robots. The hotel will have robotic reception staff, cleaners, porters and cloak room attendants. This staffing choice will apparently allow the hotel to offer greatly reduced room rates.

Unfortunately the robot creators appear to have gone for the a look which I would say places them deep in the heart of the Uncanny Valley. This pertains to the idea in the world of robo-aesthetics that as robots are made to look increasingly like people they get cuter for a bit and then there’s a sharp drop off and they become terrifying.

I really don’t know why robot engineers keep doing this, these guys certainly aren’t the first. If you really want to give yourself nightmares, google UC San Diego’s Einstein robot…

The automata at Henn Na would certainly send this prospective punter screaming back to the canals of Amsterdam quicker than you could say ‘THX 1138'. And as it happens, I wouldn’t have to run far because the Henn Na Hotel is planned to be built within the Huis Ten Bosch theme park which, inexplicably, seeks to recreate the Netherlands in Japan.

While you ponder that, please allow this cheerful chap to restore your hopes for robots in the hospitality industry. He’s cute, he brings you stuff, he doesn’t look anything like a blow up doll.

Enough! How’s the robot going?

OK, so all the parts have arrived!

I’m looking at a desk covered in wires, chips, sensors, motors… I have resistors from Thailand and capacitors from El Salvador, all carefully wrapped in anti-static bags with test pass stickers and safety compliance ratings. I don’t know what any of it means.

But make note of the sweet wheels I ordered, I’m not sure what role they will play yet, but I’m pretty sure they’re going to boost my robot’s awesomeness factor. I seem to have forgotten to order the latex face.

The first circuit

And so I begin, the first module starts by getting me straight into the practical stuff. A fundamental component of the course is a breadboard which is a plastic thing that looks like a waffle into which one can poke wires and other components to create circuits quickly without the need for a soldering iron.

I follow the instructions on the course video and in no time, I’ve put together a circuit consisting of the breadboard, a few wires, a resistor and an LED. All I need now is power. A 9 volt battery. Did I order one? No.

There must be one around here somewhere.

I prize open the smoke alarm…

I plug in the battery and… Eureka! It works! The LED glows a delicious, warming amber. I dredge up some long-unused circuitry knowledge and attempt to add another LED to the circuit in parallel and that one lights up too! And nothing explodes! I’m improvising already. I’m feeling pretty good about this.

Following this confidence boosting exercise, the course gets down to some theory and I learn a bit about charge, current and voltage, a couple of basic laws, a few videos, a bit of maths, some reading, blah… I skip the reading.

There’s a practice test which I have a go at.

I fail miserably.

I go back and do the reading. Lesson learned.

Then we get back to the practical stuff, we make a voltage regulator circuit. The circuit uses a couple of capacitors but I’m basically told not to worry my pretty little head about what capacitors are for now. I just follow the instructions in the video, plug in the components and test the circuit. It works — this will ensure that the microcontroller (the robot’s brain) doesn’t burn out. Good times.

The first exam

At the end of the module is an online exam where you look at circuit diagrams, answer questions about them and submit answers, the results come back immediately…

…and I score 100%

Yes, one hundred percent. Count them. One hundred. That’s all of them.

The rise of the robots is at hand, my friends.

So far so good. I’m feeling confident after the success of this first module. My only worry comes from the fact that I’m rather behind schedule — I started late to begin with and a miscommunication over email led to the parts being sent out quite a while later than they ought to have been (must improve my Dutch).

Will my success continue? Is it beginners luck? Will I run out of time?

Stay tuned!