Stiquito; Advanced Experiments with a Simple and Inexpensive Robot

This revolutionary new book describes how to build an inexpensive, small-legged robot, and includes the robot kit. The book provides information on the design and control of legged robots and a curriculum for education that presents experiments and projects that illustrates what they teach. The experiments lead the reader on a tour of the current state of research in robotics. Stiquito has also been used to teach in primary, secondary, and high school curricula. The robot is intended for use as a research and educational platform to study computational sensors, subsumption architectures, neural gait control, behavior of social insects, and machine vision. The robot may be powered and controlled through a tether or autonomously with and on-board power supply and electronics.

The book begins with an introduction that describes the birth of Stiquito. The chapters that follow describe the building process, its modifications, and its increased load capacity. Other chapters examine designs for simple controllers to enhance the functionality of the robot and to give the robot intelligence and SCORPIO hardware designs for performing independent, intelligent operations. The text also illustrates Stiquito's uses in education by presenting lab exercises, describing the use of nitinol in classroom experiments, and providing a robotics curriculum for undergraduates. It examines further research on the role of logic in a mobile robot's sensors, control, and locomotion; Stiquito's platform for AI; and simulation of a robot guided by vision. The book concludes with a discussion of the future for nitinol-propelled walking robots.