Astrobot General Project Plan

The project started with the basic foundation of an fully autonomous voice activated speaking robot that was constructed in 1992. In the interim, it had been partially disassembled and parts of many components had been scavenged by other projects. Our first plan was to attempt to salvage many of the electronics that remained, as well as the main chassis, shelves, and fiberglass shell. Parts of that plan, however, were shelved when an appraisal of the old electronics revealed that it might be easier, faster, and more efficient to start with new electronics rather than use some of the old components. Using the old system layout as the general system plan we purchased new equivalent electronics. Many of the original manufacturers were still in business and facilitated this strategy.

Our revised plan:
 * Save the original electronic components and layout to use as a guide and for possible future use.


 * Contact the manufacturers and order similar but state of the art modern components to rebuild the system.


 * Remake the entire electronic control and sensor system using current-generation components.
 * Strip out and reinforce the shelves.
 * Check the chassis and shell for structural integrity, and retain, reinforce, or replace as necessary.

Initial Progress

Our first action was to remove and save the old electronics out of Astrobot's chassis. Then we estimated how much space we would need, and decided that three shelves would be enough to hold all the equipment we needed to mount in the robot body. After all the electronics had their positions plotted on the shelves, we began mounting them and discovered that additional space would be needed in order to fit the sonar sensors. A fourth shelf was added to the design to hold the sensors, and we began to wire the components once the physical aspects of the robot had been completed. Coding of Astrobot's functions was the next step in the process. Programs would have to be written to measure, control, and adjust motor speed. Input from infrared sensors would need to inform the object avoidance algorithms. Phoneme syncing and voice recognition software would have to be tuned and integrated with custom images to present a convincing "face", complete with emotions.

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