Video 2

Meghana Melkote

Process

Gilbert Cranton
1 / 9

The problem with disaster relief is that survivors are often trapped, and the rescuers are unable to find them or get to them. My robot would partially alleviate this problem, because it would be able to go into destroyed buildings, fitting into the tiny spaces where humans can't, and find the survivors. It's inching motion would let it move through  a disaster area, and it could be equipped with cameras and speakers to allow communication with the survivors.

My main goal was to build a smallish robot to fit between rubble. The inchworm form works for that very well, because it could go up or down piles of rubble, and stick itself into the buildings without needing much traction. My robot works by attaching lots of modules with servos together, which move together to move the entire robot around. Over development, I added legs for traction, although in the end they didn't help much. The robot does move around now, but the problem going forwards would be to add traction to the front to allow it to grip surfaces.

The first iteration was just one module, a cardboard cylinder with a block coming out. I connected these, and stuck servos in them, and it moved pretty well. I added legs to add traction, but they didnt do much in my final project. The modules didn't change much between this first iteration and the final, with the only major changes being increasing the size to fit the servos and changing the cylinder to a more open form, to decrease weight.