Robot Balances on a Ball
Mat Bunting, a University of Arizona electrical-engineering senior, saw dollar signs in his eyes when Intel
came knocking on his door. Apparently a video he uploaded to YouTube (seen below) prompted the
processor giant to track down and flash cash in his face. Why? It's all because of a dancing hexapod
robot he built using an Intel Atom processor.
It only took two days for the YouTube robot to spark a glimmer in Intel's eye. On a hardware level, the
robot uses the 1.60 GHz Atom Z530 processor and the US15W chipset. The robotic spider also runs on
the Ubuntu open-source operating system, and features a camera on its "face" that helps the robot
determine where it's going. The robot even "adaptively learns" how to best achieve its forward-moving
goal.
"One of the things I wanted to explore was the idea of reinforcement learning," Bunting said. "What I
wanted to do was not pre-program any of those walking algorithms, I wanted it to figure out how to walk
straight forward on its own. It has the ability to figure it out itself."
According to CNET, the spider robot was the result of a final project in Bunting's UA class on cognitive
robotics using spare parts. After spotting the robot, Intel ordered two units to use in Atom
demonstrations on the road. CrustCrawler Robotics was also impressed, and signed on Bunting to
develop software for several of its products.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3ovrT8pWww
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Mat Bunting, a University of Arizona electrical-engineering senior, saw dollar signs in his eyes when Intel
came knocking on his door. Apparently a video he uploaded to YouTube (seen below) prompted the
processor giant to track down and flash cash in his face. Why? It's all because of a dancing hexapod
robot he built using an Intel Atom processor.
It only took two days for the YouTube robot to spark a glimmer in Intel's eye. On a hardware level, the
robot uses the 1.60 GHz Atom Z530 processor and the US15W chipset. The robotic spider also runs on
the Ubuntu open-source operating system, and features a camera on its "face" that helps the robot
determine where it's going. The robot even "adaptively learns" how to best achieve its forward-moving
goal.
"One of the things I wanted to explore was the idea of reinforcement learning," Bunting said. "What I
wanted to do was not pre-program any of those walking algorithms, I wanted it to figure out how to walk
straight forward on its own. It has the ability to figure it out itself."
According to CNET, the spider robot was the result of a final project in Bunting's UA class on cognitive
robotics using spare parts. After spotting the robot, Intel ordered two units to use in Atom
demonstrations on the road. CrustCrawler Robotics was also impressed, and signed on Bunting to
develop software for several of its products.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3ovrT8pWww
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