Abstract
The robot gAItano is an intelligent hexapod robot, able to move in an environment of unknown size and perform some autonomous actions. It uses the RoboRealm software in order to filter and recognize color blobs in its artificial vision stream, activate a script (VBScript in our case, or C or Python scripts) to compute decisions based on perception, and send the output to actuators using the PIP protocol. gAItano is thus a rational computerized agent: autonomous, or semi-autonomous when remote controlled; reactive; based on model (e.g., the line). gAItano moves in an environment which is partially observable, stochastic, semi-episodic, static, or semi-dynamic in case of human intervention, continuous both on perceptions and actions, multi-agent, because of human intervention that can have collaborative nature (e.g., when the human moves a block or the robot to increase his performance), or competitive (e.g., when the human moves a block or the robot to inhibit his performance).
TopHexapod Technical Specifications
The robot built in this project, named “gAItano” (where AI stands for Artificial Intelligence, and Gaetano is the Italian name that the developers chose for the robot) is a hexapod robot, created using the kit MSR-H01 Mycromagic Systems. The MSR-H01 is an aluminium-body six-legged robot structure with excellent design, available until 2012 only, in a basic kit to which additional components had been added, e.g. micro-controller, servomotors, batteries, sensors, brain. This model has some appreciable features for Robotics and Artificial Intelligence goals: it is as big as a pet, it is light but robust, it includes an excellent basic micro-controller board, well programmed to allow smooth movements for all the 6 legs and 18 grades of freedom. It supports wireless communication and Bluetooth for remote control or data exchange.
Having a good appearance and natural movements allows the robot to be accepted in human environments (Fong, Nourbakhsh, & Dautenhahn, 2003), where sensible people usually don’t accept robots, especially if they look like insects or crabs. In this project, the robot had been personalised on an experimental basis, to be defined “cool and cute” like a pet.