Robinson Junior High: Ms. Betke's 8th graders
Chelsey , Stefen, and Chelsey
"The Flying Claw"

Preliminary Design
Expert Response

What should your robot look like?
Our robot will have a round frame body with a computer screen on it as a "face". The computer screen is a way to communicate with the robot. It has a "touch-pad" to control it. Its arms stick out to the side and rotate straight out at the elbows and retract downward at the wrists. The "fingers" can grasp large objects from midair and if the object is too small it has smaller "fingers" that reel in. It has a moving fan to propel itself around the station. The fan is connected in a trench in the back of it. There is a "crossroad" where a Hot Wheels type splitter to make it go different directions. There are speakers on the head so it can talk to you. Also, it has a hookup to the ceiling on tracks to help it move around without bumping into things. Finally, there is a spectrometer on the very top of its "forehead" and lights on the sides to help you see it in the dark.

How will it get around?
It has a hookup into the ceiling on tracks that it will move along on. It also has a fan that propels the robot. It can only move around the back of the robot. The fan will spin the other way to make the robot go backwards. It has a lazar radar so that it can see objects in front of it and stop. If it is going to run in to something, it will set off a system of "beeps". If the robot needs to turn around, the fan will activate and turn it around.

How will you talk to it?
It has a premitive AI (so it will be able to understand what you say if you ask it to get tools or anything like that) with a voice recognition system. When you tell it what to do it repeats it back then you select the "ok" button, it will then do its job. It has an Intel Celeron processor, with 1.2 GHz of speed. It has a compact flash wiht 256 MB RAM. Once the job is done, it will come and tell you the results of its task. It can check the air with its spectrometer, its hands can get into hard to reach places, and it will be able to do all of this faster because it doesn"t have to get prepared, it can just go.

Do you think the retractable cable will work in space?
To keep the robot from rising because of no gravity, we had to make the cable a retracable pole like the teachers use. That way it wouldn"t bend and move. The strength of the metal would force it to stay down.

Why did you make the robot round?
We made it round beacause it is easier to store that way. Also, it makes it more aerodynamic to move faster. It just made more sense to have it round than square or rectangular.

Can the fan move in all directions?
To be able to make the robot move in all directions, we made the back have trenches with a point so it will move all around the back of the robot like a Hot Wheels track. The fan also has a switch that makes the blades spin in different directions. The different air temperatures will cause it to go forward and backward. The top also rotates to make it go in the opposite directions.

Sincerely,
Chelsey, Chelsey, Elizabeth, and Stefen