Design of a Low Cost, General Purpose Robot

This paper reports on current work at the University of California at Berkeley whose goal is the design and implementation of a relat ively inexpensive, but versa­ t i l e , experimental, computer-controlled robot suitable for use in either a research or educational sett ing. The Berkeley robot, dubbed Jason, is nearing comoletion and hardware tests are now being conducted. Jason is designed so as to permit 1t to navigate and manipulate simple objects in a real-world environment. It uses a variety of sensory-motor and communication devices; among these are an ultrasonic range, motion, and material detector, an isolated-word speech recog­ nizer, a l imited speech synthesizer, six inexpensive proximity detectors, and two arms for simple manipula­ t ion , a l l of which are mounted on a platform chassis. The robot vehicle is remotely controlled, using radio telemetry, by a time-shared, v i r tual memory, HP-3000 mini-computer, u t i l i z ing adaptive learning programs. Jason was primarily constructed to explore: (1) how an inexpensive, real-world robot system might be designed, and (2) what problems a robot "encounters" and "creates" while performing tasks in a real-world environment populated by humans. The results of this research w i l l hopefully enable us to design and build better (more rel iable and safer) robots at a modest price that are s t i l l capable of per­ forming a variety of interesting and useful tasks.