Many different types of robots are available today, but each of these robots took many years to produce. The computation, mobility, and manipulation capabilities of robots are tightly coupled to the body of the robot\u2014its hardware system. Since today\u2019s robot bodies are fixed and difficult to extend, the capabilities of each robot are limited by its body. Fabricating new robots, add-on robotic modules, fixtures, or specialized tools to extend capabilities is not a real option, as the process of design, fabrication, assembly, and programming is long and cumbersome. We need the design and fabrication tools that will speed up the fabrication of robots. Imagine creating a robot compiler that takes as input the functional specification of the robot (for example \u201cI want a robot to play chess with me\u201d) and computes a design that meets the specification, a fabrication plan, and a custom programming environment for using the robot. Many tasks big and small could be automated by rapid design and fabrication of many different types of robots using such a robot compiler.<\/p>\n
$ emacs myrobot.rbt<\/p>\n
\u201cI want a robot to play chess with me\u201d<\/p>\n
$ make myrobot<\/p>\n
Parsing specification \u2026done<\/p>\n
Determining behaviors \u2026done.<\/p>\n
Generating mechanisms \u2026done.<\/p>\n
Assembling components \u2026done.<\/p>\n
Printing \u2026done.<\/p>\n
Success!<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Our current solution to the robot compiler is a data-driven approach to design. Existing robot designs and supporting control algorithms that sit in a database are segmented and composed to create new robots. The user imagines a machine, say a duck robot or an ant robot and defines its behaviors (say a robot should pick up a piece and move it), 2) assemble mechanisms into an integrated design and 3) rapidly fabricates the device and its programming and control substrate.<\/p>\nTitle of Video<\/strong><\/h2>\n