October 10, 2001
Robot builders gear up for future
Club works on ideas for mine detectors, exoskeletons
By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
In just an afternoon, two robot enthusiasts created a mock-up of a new mine-hunting platform.
Using a $100 toy car from the toy store as a base, Paul Grayson and Harry Rodgers believe they can help root out the deadly land mines hidden around the world.
With the world's attention focused on Afghanistan, Grayson said this platform is especially timely given that more than 3,000 mines a month explode in that country. Buried remnants of the 10-year invasion by the Soviet Union and subsequent protracted civil war, a mine explodes an average of every two hours in that country, killing or maiming a child, farmer or villager.
If American ground troops were sent to Afghanistan, they would be at risk from the land mines as well. Mine detectors can stop additional carnage.
"Most mobility platforms cost thousands of dollars and they get blown up," said Grayson, founder of the Robot Club of Traverse City. "These toys are mass produced and inexpensive, and detectors built using them can hold new sensing technology that detects all sorts of mines, even plastic ones that are very hard to find."
Combining the idea of a mine detector and a toy car is not an unusual stretch for Grayson, an inveterate tinkerer and researcher about all things automated.
"I try to find unconventional uses for things," said Grayson, who studied automation at Purdue University, graduated from Naval Nuclear Propulsion School and received a degree in Marine Engineering from Northwestern Michigan College.
Grayson has been studying automation and robots for four decades, beginning with an automated arm he built as a boy using strings and sticks. Growing up in the 1950s, steeped in science fiction movies featuring robots of all sorts, Grayson was captivated by thoughts of automation and robotics. His curiosity has only increased over the years.
One of his special interests has been exoskeletons, a powered structure worn by a person that increases their strength by ten times. The idea is to use exoskeletons for loading bombs and munitions - heavy, slow work for people.
Industrial and commercial applications for exoskeletons are also possible. In fact, for years Grayson has been hunting for a photo he remembers from a 1960s advertisement showing a person in an exoskeleton loading beer kegs onto an Anheuser Busch truck.
Grayson has been following exoskeleton work ever since he read an article about the government's Hardiman Exoskeleton project in a 1968 Popular Science magazine. Still in high school at the time, he watched the funding dry up, as it became politically incorrect to finance war projects.
His own interest never stopped and as robotic and electronic technology has advanced over the decades, he believes exoskeletons are even more feasible today. Pointing to the movie "Aliens," Grayson said the exoskeleton in that movie was actually a marionette but it showed what could have been made if the Hardiman project had continued.
"James Cameron [the movie's director] was able to take a stale engineering design and turn it into a character," Grayson said. "I have talked with the developer of the original Hardiman project, he is retired in Florida now. He is still upset about the lost funding, he and his team were so close."
With political winds again shifting, the government this year dusted off the exoskeleton project and started it up again.
"In January, DAPRA granted $50 million to study exoskeleton research again, dividing the money between five companies," said Grayson, who has traveled the world repairing automation on steamships and now works in small engine repair at the Grand Traverse Resort and Spa.
Grayson formed the Robot Club of Traverse City 15 months ago to promote an interest in robots and serve as a local clearinghouse for information and technology exchange. With 10 members, the club meets monthly and has four mobility bases for members to test their ideas.
Rodgers has built a robot that moves toward light, called a 'photovore.'
"The idea with robots is that instead of making things complicated, you make them simple," said Rodgers, a coworker of Grayson at the Grand Traverse Resort and Spa.
Grayson opened his house Sunday for a special meeting of the club, focusing on exoskeletons. His garage is jammed with enough parts, pieces and components to make dozens of robots one day. One creation is a life-sized reproduction showing the movements of a human he built from $20 worth of wood, metal hinges, nuts and bolts.
"For years I drove people crazy with the word robots and now they are seeing it happen all over," said Grayson, who avidly follows developments around the world, especially in Japan where Honda and Sony are on the cutting edge. "It will be interesting to see if the ones that look like people hit the market as toys or as domestic servants; Sony thinks their little man will replace personal computers."
For more information on the Robot Club of Traverse City, contact Grayson at 946-0187 or pgrayson@chartermi.net.