The following is an excerpt from my book, Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Building Robots (Que, 2004). I thought it might provide some helpful words of wisdom to those who are involved in our Make: Robot Build (and anybody else considering designing and building a robot). The illustrations here, a series of hero-engineer trading cards, were done by MAKE’s very own Editor-in-Chief Mark Fraunfelder and are peppered throughout the book. — Gareth
Rules for Roboticists
Remember The Rules from a few years back, that icky book filled with ridiculous, oppressive rules of dating etiquette? Well, I decided to dream up some rules of my own. No, they’re not things like “Never call a robot after the final assembly. Make it call you.” Or: “The way to a robot’s stomach is through its rear access panel.” These “rules” represent the collective working wisdom of builders who’ve been bolting together bots for decades. The cyberneticist Gregory Bateson used to say: “Always tie your ideas with slipknots.” So these are not hard and fast rules, more like rules of thumb. Just a few things to consider as you build your robots.
1. A roboticist is a generalist, a systems thinker.
One of the things that attracts a lot of people (me, for one) to robotics is that it involves the orchestration of many different disciplines. There are, obviously, specialists in the field — those who work only on AI control architectures, or robot locomotion, or whatever — but even they must keep the entire machine in mind. Most people who work in the field, and certainly all amateurs, have to have at least basic skills in numerous disciplines. As you get more into robotics, you’ll also find yourself spending a lot of time looking at humans and animals trying to figure out how they work. Oddly, trying to construct machine “creatures” gives one an even greater appreciation for the heavenly designs of nature, which brings us to…
2. A roboticist is a “deconstructionist”
As a robot builder, you’ll find yourself obsessively looking at the natural and built worlds and going: “Ah-ha! So that’s how it’s done.” Nothing will be safe as you take apart toys and machines that don’t work anymore (and some that still do), and find yourself playing with your food in a manner unsettling to others (“Cool, there’s the ligament attachments!”). But, for the love of all that’s civilized, leave the family pets alone!
Aside: Rumor has it that BEAM (and Wow Wee Toys) robot inventor Mark Tilden has been known to put all manner of bio-matter (chicken and other animal bones and bits) into his dishwasher so that he can clean them thoroughly for study of their mechanics, and one might even assume, incorporation into disturbing SRL-esque bio-mechs.
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