• Question: How often do you make a robot?

    Asked by 655rbte33 to Abbie, Melanie, Paul, Stu, Tom on 15 Mar 2016.
    • Photo: Abbie Hutty

      Abbie Hutty answered on 15 Mar 2016:

      Personally, I never make the whole robot- I only make a part of it. There are probably about 1000 people in total working on building the ExoMars Rover! We make quite a lot of prototypes and demonstration models to test out different bits of it though, so we have several different test models that we have made. Again it’s a team effort though – even if it is only testing one aspect of the rover it will probably still have had 20 or 30 people work on it!

    • Photo: Stuart Inglis

      Stuart Inglis answered on 15 Mar 2016:

      I must admit I’ve never made a complete robot at work! I’m always making tools and upgrading parts of robots though. Some of my tools need a very quick turn-around time so I’d need to get a design out within a week, on other jobs I can spend more time on the design. So it varies quite a lot!

      When I was younger I was big into Lego Mindstorms and would make a new robot just about every day! Have you ever used Lego Mindstorms to make anything?

    • Photo: Melanie Zimmer

      Melanie Zimmer answered on 16 Mar 2016:

      I have never made a robot myself, I just help to programme the software for the robots. There are other companies that specialise on the components of a robot and how to build it.

      The only complete (non-functional) robot I built was my lego WALL-E. 😉

    • Photo: Tom Rooney

      Tom Rooney answered on 16 Mar 2016:

      I think every good robot I have made has been whilst in a team, or I have had a good bit of help from others. I really push to get something made, and use a fair bit of my spare time too, so I think I have worked maybe 6 robots in 10 years. My robotic whiskers are not really a robot, but they are my favourite! The teams I have worked in range from just myself, 2 ,6 and 25 people.

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