• Question: Roughly how long would it take you to make/repair something like a robot?

    Asked by Faye to Iulia, Katie, Ollie, Siobhan on 15 Mar 2017.
    • Photo: Iulia Motoc

      Iulia Motoc answered on 15 Mar 2017:

      I depends. For example, if one of my robots break, we will need to buy new ones. If you have to repair a robot, it depends on the problem, sometimes you might have to buy new ones or build a new one.

    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 15 Mar 2017:

      Some simple ones can be repaired in minutes. For example, a wire may come off in your prototype robot, and all you have to do is to put it back.

      It gets time-consuming when you work with complex systems, with a lot of wires, small parts, delicate electronics and a programming layer on top. With complex systems like these, it may even be difficult to pinpoint what the actual problem is, never mind trying to repair it!

      Fixing complex things is an art in itself, and there are communities out there dedicated specifically to this or that model of the robot, with interesting solutions posted daily. I might join one of these soon, in fact – I need to be able to download stuff my participants say to their robots, but it’s not that easy!

    • Photo: Katie Pavey

      Katie Pavey answered on 15 Mar 2017:

      For a typical robot that I use in a car factory, it takes about 2 -3 months to make. If it was really urgent and a customer needed it right away, we could probably shorten it to about 6 weeks. Our robots are made of over 1000 different parts and are over 2 metres tall, so they take a little wile to put together.

      For repairing a robot, it really depends what has gone wrong. Usually it’s a worn out motor or sensor, or just a mistake in the robot program – we try and fix this in about an hour or so, as if one robot isn’t working it can stop the entire factory making cars.

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