The ready availability of low cost mobile robots (locomobot) would provide researchers in artificial intelligence the tool needed to test these algorithms in a "real world" environment, outside of the mainframe on which they were developed. In our phase i study, we will establish tradeoff analysis for the key characteristics of mobility, functionality, datalink, and power source. We will then review our recommendations for the design of a family of locomobots with the cognizant engineer. Our design baseline will provide modular expansion capability to add arms, end effectors, stereo vision, wide band datalinks, and other functions as may be required by the individual research needs. These modules can be attached to the baseline locomobot as necessary, and can be obtained as "optional extra cost" items, thereby reducing the cost of the basic locomobot to those applications where all functions are not required. Androbot is one of the few small business companies engaged exclusively in the design and manufacture of low cost mobile robots. All contain microprocessor-based internal control systems and are principally operated by reprogrammable embedded software. They contain bidirectional datalinks to permit remote teleoperation from algorithms residing on mainframe host computers. We propose to build on this baseline of experience to provide a comprehensive plan for development of prototypes during the phase ii program and estimate the unit cost in production.
