Category: Technology

The first press coverage has been published for the welly wanger, in the Daily Post, and after walking around Aberystwyth in the rain for about 20 minutes I managed to find a copy.

album359/File0001.jpg is a scan of the article for you to read for yourself.

The OCR output of a scan of the article follows:

Robot welly wanger puts boot into rivals

Scientists
meet scrap
challenge

By HYWEL TREWYN
WELSH scientists are hoping for a world
first with the debut of a welly-throwing
robot.
Aberystwyth’s metal marvel makes its
debut later this month in Dorset.
Scientists at the university’s Depart-
ment of Computer Science were chal-
lenged to build a mechanised welly-
thrower using scrap metal and discarded
mechanical parts.
And the team of three – expected to
take a leading role in a forthcoming
European Space Agency mission to Mars,
– rose to the challenge.
They claim their robot is capable of
throwing a Wellington up to 80 metres.
The machine is powered by a diesel
engine from an old concrete mixer with
the gearbox of an old Citroen 2CV moun-
ted on a home-made chassis.

Team members Richard Shipman, who
teaches artificial intelligence, Dr Andy
Shaw, a researcher in space robotics, and
computer technician lan Izett applied
their scientific expertise in robotics and
artificial intelligence to improve its
throwing accuracy – the main criteria for

judging the competition.
Up to six Wellingtons a time are fired
from a 2m diameter computer-con-
trolled disc which rotates at up to 250
times per minute.
A second computer monitors wind
speed and direction and relays the in-

formation via a third computer and a
radio link to a laptop where team mem-
bers can monitor its progress.
Speaking as final field trials were set to
get under way, Mr Shipman said: “Other
than building the machine itself, the
main challenge for us has been getting
the computer systems to talk to each
other and then to interact with all the
hardware.
“The exercise has been very useful for
our research as it’s the kind of work we
are always doing with robots and
autonomous vehicles.
“Basically this ‘welly wanger’ is a robot
– probably the first of its kind in the
world.
“All that remains to be done now is to
teach the robot itself what its capabilities
are.
“It has been built with a certain
amount of artificial intelligence and dur-
ing the final week of field trials it will
learn in the same way as a small child
learns as it grows up”, he added.
The Re-booters, as the team is known,
will line up against 15 other mechanical
“welly wangers” at the Great Dorset
Steam Fair on Wednesday, August 30.
The competition is due to be broadcast
on Channel 4’s Scrapheap Challenge
series in the spring of 2007.

The mechanical welly throwing team the Rebooters, experts in robotics and
artificial intelligence, from left: lan Izett, Andy Shaw and Richard Shipman

This is getting to be a bit of an obsession, but we’ve now been filmed for the interviews for the Scrapheap Challenge Roadshow, and have also been interviewed by the University press officer.

The machine is coming along nicely, but there’s all the little bits need doing, like interfacing all the electronics with the mechanics and making sure that all the calibration is done correctly.

Did I also not mention that the Artificial Intelligence is taking a little while to develop, but we will have the worlds first artificial intelligent robotic welly wanger in a weeks time.

Now clearing has started, I’m having to man the phones, so I’m not getting much spare time to do any building and testing for the next week.

Well, I don’t really want to give too much away about the design, but our welly wanger for the Scrapheap Challenge Roadshow is now coming along – Ian has been really busy with building a motorised chassis to move the whole contraption around on, and has even built the rotor arms, however the hub was mounted a little too low, so the wellies kept hitting the chassis, so I set about it with the angle grinder and welder and raised the height of the hub buy about 8 inches, providing more than enough clearance.

Our decision to use paired wellies to balance each other looks to be a good one, as when we ran the rotor with only one welly on it, there was a certain amount of bouncing induced into the whole machine.

We also ran the machine with 2 wellies which was a lot more stable, and succeeded in chucking one (unintentionally) a reasonable distance, even though it was released near vertical.

20060806BuildDay/DSC_1381.jpg

I’m writing some software to control the welly wanger, and am having to do some nasty ballistic calculations.
I’ve got some code that implements some of the equations, but not everything is straightforward. I need to determine a pair of variables (rpm and launch angle) from the desired distance – the competition is not just about throwing it as far as you can, but hitting targets, so being able to calculate desired parameters is vital. Of course, solving this way will not result in a single pair, but in multiple value pairs, so my initial guess is to fix the RPM as close as possible to the maximum, so we don’t have to control the motor directly, and just alter the release angle.
We do intend to have some form of PWM control of the motor driving the rotor, but I’m not sure how well the starter motor will react to rapid switching from the microcontroller.

The other issue that I have is solving for release angle, as the release angle determines the release height, as well as the trajectory, which confuses the issue somewhat, and is making my head hurt somewhat. I’m going to have to consult a proper mathematician to help me with the algebra.