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Since connectors are expensive and bulky, we designed circular contacts into the PCB layout for testing the circuit and flashing the MSP430. I made a simple "bed of nails" test jig with spring-loaded contacts to mate with these pads.

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The robots have two skis soldered to the bottom of the PCB and two charging prongs on the top. As well as supporting the front of the robot, the skis are ground terminals for charging. They make contact with a foil pad in the charging bay. The angled charging prongs are designed to wedge under the aluminium rail in the bay, which is powered.

The wheels are the only components on the robot which require any considerable custom fabrication. Surprisingly, we couldn't find a commercially available rubber wheel a few millemetres across! We had a look around for suitable rubber washers, etc, but found nothing. Instead, I developed a simple method of mass producing the wheels from neoprene sheet.

Circuit Design

The circuit design aims to minimise cost, area and component count. In this section, subcircuits will be introduced and discussed.

Power 

An MCP1702 3.3V linear regulator provides a stable source for the MSP430. Its maximum supply voltage is too low for direct connection to the battery and in any case, the noise produced by the motors would likely be too great.

Hardware Overview

The robots were designed carefully to save money without sacrificing too much functionality. The greatest cost savings were made in the mechanical design. The robots are just one printed circuit board (PCB). The wheels are the only custom mechanical parts; everything else is an off-the-shelf component, compatible with standard electronics manufacturing techniques, soldered to the PCB. As a result the platform is economical and its manufacture simple, for researchers and electronics assembly firms alike.

Whilst most of the team were out of the country, Alexis and Klaus presented the Formica robots at the ALIFE XI conference on artificial life. The conference was hosted by the SENSe research group, of which I will soon be a member. It attracted researchers from around the world and sounds like it was very interesting; wish I could have been there.