Page 22 - The Ultimate Palm Robot

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Bots /The Ultimate Palm Robot/ Mukhar & Johnson / 222880-6 / Chapter 1

Chapter 1 Meeting the Palm Robot 5

Stiquito

The Stiquito is a great example of simplified robotics. The Stiquito is not pro-
grammed. Like BEAM bots, its behavior is driven by the electronic circuitry
that the robot is constructed from. (The Stiquito is not a BEAM robot because it
is battery powered, and thus not able to act autonomously for long.) With the
Stiquito, the electronic circuit passes current through the legs of the robot;
the wire legs are made of a special material called Nitinol, also known com-
monly as a “muscle wire.” Nitinol contracts when current heats the wire,
and expands when cooled, thus simulating the way a muscle works in a living
creature. Stiquito was originally developed at Indiana University
(www.cs.indiana.edu/robotics/stiquito.html), and you can buy inexpensive
Stiquito kits to make your own.

Project Timber
The majority of robots rely on programming, not prewired circuits, to drive
behavior. Project Timber is a research program of the Computer Science and
Engineering department at the Oregon Health and Science University. The ro-
bot in this project is known as Timbot, which is short for Timber Robot. The
brain of the robot is a Pentium III CPU that is mounted in a radio-controlled
monster truck model. The Timbot is an example of a robot that puts all the intel-
ligence of the robot into a computer that controls the robot’s behavior. Unfortu-
nately, for hobbyists like us, the programming aspect is rather formidable.

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