Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hello! My name is Christina, a student in California at Glen A Wilson High School. My partner Grace and I have been assigned a Senior Project for our end of the year investigation in our class, Biomedical Interventions. Our project is based upon making an automated robot for its usage in a typical Emergency Room. We understand that making a robot is very complex, and requires some high knowledge of engineering, mechanical design, and robotics. Therefore, we are searching for anyone who can help assist and guide us on our project. Some questions we currently have about creating the robot are:

1) What are the key components of developing the robot?
2) What essential materials do we need in order to construct the robot?
3) Can the robot’s battery only be charged through movement? If not, then what other methods of charging can we use so that the robots are constantly functioning?
4) How much will the cost be for one robot? (Materials, animation technology, etc.)

Note: This is a hypothetical project. Therefore, we encourage any general answers that relates to if we were to actually build a robot. In our project, we are required to build a model of the robot but it doesn't have to function

Thank you!


Sincerely,
Grace & Christina
January 9, 2019

Hi Grace and Christina,

Sounds like you've got and interesting project and some great questions about how to get started.
Science Buddies has several projects related to robots that can be accessed at the following link:

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... s/robotics

I don't think that any of these will exactly fit your interests. But there should be some useful information in the background sections and bibliographies of the various projects that will give you some answers to your first two questions.

Your robot's battery will need some kind of external charger. Motion of the robot alone cannot provide enough energy to charge the battery.

The robot's cost will depend on a large number of factors. I think you'd need a good definition of your robot's functions before you could try estimating its cost.

I hope this helps. Please post again if you have more questions.

A. Norman