Question: how has the engineering of robots changed in the last 10yrs

Alan Winfield answered on 24 Mar 2011:

Good question. In our lab in Bristol it’s changed hugely – the reason is that we now make most of the parts for our robots by printing then on 3D printers. More than 10 years ago we would have to make the parts out of metal, which took much longer. Now, if a researcher needs a new part for his or her robot they can ask Sam, our 3D printer genius. Sam will draw the part that they describe on a Computer Aided Design (CAD) system on a computer and if the researcher thinks it looks right Sam will send it to the RP (rapid prototyping) machine to be printed – which may take nearly a day if it’s a large part. But still much faster than it used to.

The brilliant think about using 3D printers is that our robots now have much more interesting shapes because it’s just as easy to make complicated curves structures as ones with flat lines or angles.

In fact you can now get really low cost 3D printers – you should try and persuade your school to get one. Then you could design and print your own robots too!