At the forefront of Artificial Intelligence

Robosapien Internals

After looking at the Robosapien, I was curious to see how Mark Tilden's involvement in the project shaped the design of the robot—especially one so heavily dependent on batteries!

Casually looking at the Robosapien gives you very little idea about just how well the robot is designed. The robot is surprisingly well engineered and manufactured, although this means many parts of the robot are extremely hard to take apart without breaking it. To this day I cannot get into the arm or lower-body areas, since there are some very awkwardly positioned screws that will require a specialized (bendy) screwdriver.

Nevertheless, I could open up the main chest area, allowing access the the core "brain" and sensor/motor connectors, as well as the main arm motors. Furthermore, I managed to prise open one of the leg cavities, exposing the feet sensors and leg arrangement.

Without further ado, here are the images:

The main circuitry is all here, along with a vast array of connectors. The entire circuit board design is clear and well-marked. I assume the IC marked U3 is the central core of the robot. The connector to the bottom-right connects to the power switch and speaker at the rear of the robot.

You can see here how the motor is arranged flat against the body (right), and how the arm and the gears it is connected to are springed to facilitate the motion (left).

Finally, the foot sensor up close (left), and the leg assembly (right). Note the rear sensor assembly is identical to the front.

Conclusion

The Robosapien is extremely well made, and Mark Tilden's influence is evident through the sheer ingenuity of many of the robots features. It is a shame so much of this is lost when playing with Robosapien purely as a toy.

This said, the ever inventive public have spawned numerous hacks, enhancements and tricks, including adding a CMUcam2 to the front, additional processors or RF control. Robosapien.tk seems like a good place to start if you want to learn more.

If I make any more advancements taking apart my Robosapien, I'll post them here. Watch this space...

Sponsor

Robosapien supplied by Active Robots.

Submitted: 23/08/2004

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