(U-WIRE) CARBONDALE, Ill. – Jim Ehrenstrom said his favorite part of his electronics troubleshooting and maintenance class was trying to hit his classmates with his robot.
Three Southern Illinois University seniors studying electronic system technologies learned to use a little of their own muscle power to control a metal arm with a hook on the end.
Ehrenstrom, Gavin Flure, and Corey Tumpane used what they learned in Brian Kearney’s class, information from other classes and even some things they taught themselves.
Ehrenstrom’s muscles and a computer program called Robo Talk controlled the robot. Flure was the only one of the group members who had previous experience with the program.
Ehrenstrom used his right arm muscle to move the robot right and his left to move the robot left. To move forward, Ehrenstrom had to synchronize his arm muscles to move at the same time.
“He supplies the muscle, I do the programming,” Flure said. “Whenever Jim (Ehrenstrom) flexes a muscle, we get that voltage through amplifiers here, which will boost it up 1,000 times.”
Kearney, an associate professor of electronic system technologies, said he requires his students to pick a special project and encourages them to come to him with ideas.
“This one was partially done from last semester but they didn’t really get too far with it,” he said.
Ehrenstrom said his group got more use out of the project than any group before it. He said just getting the robot to work at all was good enough for him.
Ehrenstrom said he wished he could work on the project more next semester but was graduating on Saturday. He said he hoped Flure and Tumpane would be able to continue their work and possibly enhance the project by adding more amplifiers and getting more power out of the robot.
Ehrenstrom and Flure both have an interest in biomedical procedures and said one day they would like to work with similar but more advanced robots. They said they hoped to eventually build robots that used brain waves as control systems.
Kearney said it was impressive the group had gotten so far because only Flure had a background in biomedical procedures. The other two students had to teach themselves the theories.
For now, the students said they were happy with the outcome.
Kearney said the group had met all of its goals on the project and would receive As in the class.