Kickbot Photos

Kickbot is a spherical robot built built by myself and Dave Wentzlaff as a class project for MIT 6.836 Embodied Intelligence. We used a large hamster ball for the external chassis and a lightweight foam disk for the internal core. The two halves of the robot spin separately for differential drive. Kickbot is completely autonomous and uses mercury switches, IR sensors, and a camera to sense its environment. Its subsumption-style control system causes it to wander around looking for people, whom it then pesters until it gets (gently) kicked. The top picture is of the robot's control board which used a simple PIC micro-controller, while the lower right-hand picture is a snapshot of what the robot sees when it is wandering around. You can find out much more detail in our final report.