Question: What kind of robots do you work with and what can they do?

Viktor Doychinov answered on 28 May 2020:

Thanks for the question!

I have worked on two large projects that involve robots. One of them is called Self-Repairing Cities (https://selfrepairingcities.com/) and the other is called Pipebots (http://pipebots.ac.uk/). Any large robotics project needs a lot of people with different skills.

On the Self-Repairing Cities project I worked on a drone with a 3D printer attached to it. The twist was that the 3D printer used asphalt. This way, the drone could fly over a road, use computer vision to detect a crack or a pothole, land on it, and use the 3D printer to repair it. I worked on some of the programming of the robot. What I did was take data from the computer vision system, and used that to control the 3D printer.

The Pipebots project is about small robots that would go inside water and sewer pipes to inspect them for any problems, such as water leaking or a sewer blockage. My job here is to work on wireless communications for the robots – think Wi-Fi, but underground and in the pipes. This is necessary so we don’t lose the robots and so that we can get data from them. It is also important so we can make sure the robots do not go where we do not want them to go.

The Pipebots robots have to be small, so they are robots we are making ourselves. One design makes the robot look like a ball – sort of like a Sphero robot but with more bits and pieces.

Other robots I have worked with are small buggy robots controlled by a micro:bit. I have done this for the Code Club I volunteer at, and it is really good fun. While they cannot do a lot, they can still do quite a bit. Things you learn when you program such a robot are directly applicable to bigger and more complex robots.