STTR Phase II: General Robot Controller for Legged Mobile Robots with Integrated Open Source Software

This Small Business Technolgy Transfer (STTR) Phase II project focuses on the development of a generalized processing and sensor pack complete with open-source software and curricula for using legged robots as an educational platform for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) courses. The innovation of this proposal is a middleware product called SkewZone Brain and Sensor Pack. This Brain Pack which consists of processing boards, plug-in sensors, wireless communication, software interfaces and mechanical hardware for attachment to commercially available legged robots, serves as a value-added layer between the low-level operations of a robot platform and the high-level software. Educators will be able to migrate their Brain Pack from one robot to another, allowing software, curriculum, and hardware reuseability. The Brain Pack provides sufficient sensory feedback to close the loop on the mechanical control of the legged platform. Higher-level cognitive algorithms, such as path-planning, vision, and behavior-based systems, can be easily developed or reused. The distinctive features and challenges of legged robots provide unique opportunities for high-school and college curricula in numerous STEM topics. Robots are currently used in a variety of classes. However, current educational robot platforms are dominated by wheeled robots; legged robots with a biological basis are almost absent. Robots, which have sufficient on-board processing power, sensors, a wireless interface, and open-source software, are necessary for building curricula that meet educational standards and for interesting research assignments.