January 13, 2021

Cross-country collaboration: building EMAR version 7 with expert robot designers

Last June, Project EMAR received the University of Washington’s Innovation Gap Fund grant from UW CoMotion to develop a robust prototype for Project EMAR. The team partnered with Guy Hoffman, an associate professor at Cornell University, and Roberto Aimi, an industrial mechatronics engineer and principal at Alium Labs. Guy and Roberto have worked together previously to collaborate on the design of a robotic musician, Shimon Robot, and a smart home assistant social robot, Vyo.

Guy sketched the initial designs in upstate New York while Aimi began to build the prototype in San Francisco. Meanwhile, Matthew Bavier, UW Electrical Engineering student, began a second EMAR assembly of an identical EMAR core in Tucson, Arizona where he was located at the time. Once campus opens back up, Bavier will bring the prototype back to Seattle for the team to access.

The purpose behind EMAR V7 is a robust mechatronic core that allows for seamless communication from software to hardware. In addition, this new prototype will allow for behaviors such as head tilts and full-body rotation. Once functionality of the skeleton is established, Project EMAR can commence prototyping physical behaviors and designing the exterior shell of the social robot! Throughout this process, the team will begin integrating the software and hardware of the EMAR prototype, working with Kai Mihata, UW Computer Science undergraduate.

Project EMAR hopes to complete building this new and improved EMAR V7 robust core by the end of winter quarter, so stay tuned for more updates!