SAM Daily Times

Ex-policeman builds robot from household goods

Take a pair of hi-fi speakers, an old radio, a couple of DVD players and countless other household appliances, apply some ingenuity and what do you get? If you're Mark Haygood, an ex-cop turned robot maker, you get HEX -- a four foot, three-inch tall humanoid robot.

Four years in the making, it's been as much art project as engineering feat, he says, requiring the visualization of the various body parts. "The legs are made from outdoor speakers -- they're gorgeous. His shoulders are made from fans, his forearms from power tools. The chest and back are made from kid's riding toys and his head is a clock radio. I also employed a 3-D printer for the hands, using a combination of the Inmoov, an open-source design and my own artistic expression," the 49-year-old from Baltimore explains.

"There are so many diverse parts on the machine that it would take me all day to tell you. It was a really complex build, but I love this machine and I'm anxious to build another." The self-taught roboticist has drawn inspiration from Honda's ASIMO robot and Drexel University's HUBO as well as sounding out opinion at his local hacker space. 

Assembling HEX has cost the proverbial arm and a leg, "tens of thousands of dollars," says Haygood and is controlled remotely using a Zigbee USB dongle attached to his laptop. "He can step unsupported, but it's not completely stable. I have a slight problem with joint compliance at the moment. But his hands are fully functional, his legs are functional and he has 23 degrees of freedom." 

"Because of the crime problems in Baltimore, it's a perfect opportunity to try and snatch some children back from the abyss. That's my objective. It's a really beautiful thing to be able to introduce robotics to kids." 

To help spread the message, and the cost, Haygood is launching a Kickstarter campaign. The money raised will be used to iron out flaws as well as document the entire process" so anyone can see every nut, bolt and screw," he says. 

"It's full speed ahead for me now. This was trial by fire. I chose the most difficult thing a person could build and I've learned so much that my brain is just brimming now and ready to go. I'm excited for the future."

cnn.com