I'm better than me.

I've been thinking about the head and drive mechanism not being particularly robust and judging by discussions in the Astromech builders forums, the public can be brutal with displayed droids. I doubt I'd be attending the same events but I want robust. I like robust.

Frustrated with second-guessing myself and my inability to make decent progress I have to console myself with the adage; Fail Fast, Fail Often. Iterate. Prototype. Understand that every change or "failure" is simply a step toward the new and improved version. I'm learning from everything. Nothing is wasted. Honest.

Parallel to my own internal conflicts of self-worth is the feeling that I should be putting my efforts to better use. Granted, I want to build cool robots, I can't deny that passion but it bothers me that with everything going on in the world, I'm putting my efforts into what is essentially an expensive toy. I can do better than that.

avatar.xprize.org

Coincidently, about this time, the Avatar XPRIZE is announced and I read the objectives, guidelines and example tasks. The goal for my robot has always been to have a tough, usable machine and the Avatar XPRIZE objectives just felt right! I'd compromised on my early goals, aimed lower and that grinds a little but I simply don't have the resources to be able to produce anything in any timescale close to that needed for the XPRIZE. I can adopt the worthy objectives though. I should at least try. And try using low cost components, materials and methods so something could be deployed for less than $1,000,000.

Too hard? Too easy says Evan Ackerman (Contributing Editor for IEEE Spectrum's Automaton), suggesting some interesting additions:

"So how could the competition be made better? Fundamentally, I think there are several different ways of looking at robotic avatars—you could consider them to be remote humans, with the goal of creating an experience for a user that’s as immersive and as much like “being there” as possible, or you could consider them to be one half of a robot-human team, where both the robot and the human augment each other’s strengths and while compensating for weaknesses."

And is in-line with my thinking:

"An avatar designed to be part of a more practical robot-human team might be much different, depending on what the system was designed to do. To use disaster relief as an example, you might not want the robotic system to be humanoid at all. You’d want the remote hardware to be capable of extreme mobility, to be very strong and durable, and to incorporate a suite of sensors that outclass anything a human has to offer, while relying on the human to make sense of the data and provide high level control of the robot. Some challenging tasks that would take advantage of this might be:

• Perform a dexterous manipulation task in a smoke-filled environment.
• Locate an unconscious human trapped under rubble, and rescue them.
• Collaborate with other humans to unload heavy supplies out of a truck.

Exactly!

To that end, I'm pivoting the project slightly. Aside from some redesign for robustness, the only real changes are more focus on making the arms more usable and the addition of some kind of stereoscopic vision system and remote HMI. I have no idea how far I'll get. Baby steps!