From robot arm to a complete robot

The image of a robot moving flexibly to assist in the restaurants in several foreign countries of Japan and the US inspired the groups of students Than Duc Anh (class 12A1), Nguyen Thao Chi and Nguyen Hoang Thinh (class 11A1) in Hiep Hoa No 4 High School, academic year 2019 – 2020 to follow the topic to create “Multifunctional robot”.

The group of inventors and guiding teacher Tong Ngoc Thang operate the robot.

From the model of robot arm joining the Invention Contest 3 years ago, the group of inventors improved several steps to complete the robot. “Hopper” robot is 1.76m height, 52kg weight and consists of 29 motors to help it move the head, neck, arms and legs so that it can take everything and imitate the human’s walking.

The project was highly evaluated by the Jury Board of the Contest as a robot arm with sufficient basic functions and nearly complete holding function. Hopper can hold a cup, pencil, small ball, paper and thin card. The product is highly applicable in several fields of welcoming citizen, instructing the road, transporting things, supporting the teaching activities in schools and medical sector.

Head of the group Duc Anh said: “Because the robot production is not developed in Vietnam with few references and costly components”.

Thus, apart from sharing the idea and asking teachers’ guidance, three students Duc Anh, Thao Chi and Hoang Thinh must search for more knowledge on the Internet. It took them months to raise the idea, erect the component with a lot of difficulties. Sometimes they thought of giving up the project because they tried to make it move in vain.

Persisting in the target

After many failures, the group members discussed and divided the specific tasks. With good knowledge in nature science, Duc Anh and Hoang Thinh were in charge of producing the hardware.

Firstly, Duc Anh and Hoang Thinh drew the detail design for each part of the robot then produced the components by the carton box and bamboo bars. Whenever encountering difficulties, they came to ask for assistance from Physics teacher Tong Ngoc Thang.

Later on, Duc Anh and Hoang Thinh started connecting and erecting the electronic integrated circuit and board to a complete system so that the robot can move.

To reduce cost, the inventors searched for used materials such as thermal resistant soft metal panel, steel bar, plastic and aluminum boxes, electronic circuits....from the previous project at the school.

Besides, Thao Chi used her knowledge of informatics to write the control programme on the software to help the robot flexibly operate.

Now, Hopper can operate by two methods of automatic control and imitate control to implement the programmed tasks such as moving ball from this hand to the other, dancing, working the repeated tasks or imitating the action of the controller.

Especially, Hopper can communicate with human via sound, voice and programmed application on smartphone and computer. The inventors also equipped it with toxic gas detecting switch, thermal and moisture sensors with LCD indication to alarm the human in danger case.

The robot is prominent for it long and accurate operation in severe environments such as too high temperature, too low temperature, lack of oxygen, risk of disease infection. Thus, if the inventors get sufficient investment in the future, Hopper will be an ideal product to support human in conducting difficult and dangerous tasks.

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