Welcome to my robot blog, where I hope to keep the technology, museum and education communities up to date with developments in the M-Bot project – or the Museum robot project – otherwise known by its proper title, the Mobile Telepresence for Museums Initiative.
CSIRO and NMA staff accompany the robot to map pathways through the Landmarks Gallery.
Describing our robot in words can be a bit unsatisfying, so I have posted some photos of the currently nameless skeletal robot. Taken in an early stage of development, the first photo shows expectant CSIRO and museum staff about to accompany the robot on a recent test flight at the National Museum of Australia. The aim? To laser map some pathways through the Landmarks Gallery. This mapping process will allow it to autonomously move through the exhibition, avoiding obstacles and being in the right place at the right time. Cool! A robot isn’t a real robot if it can’t move around by itself.
The second photo shows Fred Pauling from the Autonomous Systems Laboratory at the CSIRO ICT Centre, adjusting the 360° camera that forms the ‘head’ of the robot. It is this 360° camera that will provide the stunning immersive environment that students will experience when using the bandwidth capability of the NBN.
Fred adjusts the all important 360° camera
So, the latest roboty news is that a national design competition for the body of our robot closes tomorrow. We are hoping for a deluge of sketches and imaginings to hit the CSIRO inbox from designers all over the country. Check the details here. (On Monday I had a chat with a teacher of Technology Design at a Canberra secondary college. He has his students hard at work designing bodies using CAD. I was excited to hear he’s confident that we’ll be receiving at least three student designs by COB tomorrow!)
I’ll keep you posted with progress updates about the development of the robot body design, as well as lots of other interesting aspects of this exciting NBN project.
Robert Bunzli, Museum Robot Project Manager, National Museum of Australia
Great blog Robert, I will be following you :)