• Question: how much time do yoe need to build a robot

    Asked by miki1234 to Aisling, Cara, Dino, Graham, Patrick on 6 Mar 2018.
    • Photo: Aisling Lee

      Aisling Lee answered on 6 Mar 2018:

      That depends on the difficulty. Ive built some robots in 2/3 hours and other take months.
      Some bigger more complex robots take years to develop.
      It all depends on the type and difficulty of the robot

    • Photo: Patrick Lynch

      Patrick Lynch answered on 6 Mar 2018:

      There are a huge range of different types of robots and the time it would take to build one massively depends on how complex or simple the robot is. Something like a sumo robot https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCqxOzKNFks is simpler and may take days to weeks to build where as something like asimo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdQL11uWWcI&t=156s or Handle3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7xvqQeoA8c or Cassie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Is4JZqhAy-M have taken years to develop.

      There are also many different stages to building a robot from concept, design through to manufacture, software development and testing. These will also effect the time taken to build a robot. If you have a design and all the components you need and you just need to put it together it will not take very long.

    • Photo: Cara O'Brien

      Cara O'Brien answered on 6 Mar 2018:

      I definitely agree with Aisling and Patrick, it depends on what robot you want to make. Usually the more time you spend and the more work you put into making the robot, the better it will be. This is why when you work on making robots it’s great to work in a team. When you work with more people on one robot you can get a lot more work done than if you were on your own. Working with other people to make a robot is a good way to make sure that everything is being build and designed the best way possible, you have more brains thinking about the problem!

    • Photo: Edin Omerdic

      Edin Omerdic answered on 6 Mar 2018:

      I was supervisor of PhD project, where PhD candidate designed and developed a reconfigurable, inspection-class Remotely Operated Vehicle (IROV) in the period of 2014-2018, aimed to perform periodic and post storm inspection of offshore Marine Renewable Energy (MRE) converters, moorings and foundations, reducing the need for commercial divers to be employed in this difficult and potentially dangerous environment. It is serious peace of equipment and we designed full control system with advanced features, including fault-tolerant control allocation algorithms in the bottom layer, transparent interface between an ROV and supporting platforms (surface platforms, surface/subsea garages and/or supporting vessels) in the middle layer and assistive tools for mission execution/monitoring/supervision in the top layer.

    • Photo: Graham Cullen

      Graham Cullen answered on 6 Mar 2018:

      The rest of the guys have explained it very well. To give you an example of how much time is spent on design, material selection, electronics, programming, and all the rest….

      I spent about 10 hours assembling my 3D printer at home where all I had to do was to put the parts together and turn it on.

      However the simple ball and beam system (which you can read and watch a video about in my profile) which I worked out the mathematical equations for how the physical system behaves, read all the manuals for the software and hardware that I was using (Thousands of pages of manuals….), designed the physical system, testing the system at each step…. This took hundreds of hours to complete.

      So yes, if you just assemble the parts it wont take very long, but if you have to design the whole thing from the start it can take a very long time, depending on how complex your robot is!

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