Field Robot Chronicles

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Lo! Welcome back fellow Adventurebot! The snow has melted and we’re springing forwards to the field season. Let’s see the remainder of winter and what’s ahead!

Robots in Nature:

Winter Breakfast with Squirrels

Squirrels in a circle surrounding a Robot Butterfly perched on a branch

Three Robot Butterflies were out in nature early in the morning, enjoying breakfast with the squirrels snacking on sunflower seeds! Right after a fresh snowfall, possibly the last of the winter season here. Watching the curiosity of the squirrels looking at Robot Butterfly was like seeing two worlds briefly notice each other. 😊

Squirrel climbing tree stump to have a better look at Robot Butterfly … or maybe just the food 😉

Breakfast time! Squirrels munching on food, Robot Butterfly perched on tree stump

Squirrel leaping over Robot Butterfly

Some drama between two squirrels during the breakfast

Here’s Robot Butterfly near the ice on the frozen lake! The sky was beautiful that day, with the sun casting through the clouds and illuminating stripes on the expanse of the frozen lake.

Sunny winter day with fluffy clouds, illuminating the snow covered ice of Lake Ontario. Robot Butterfly is in the snow on the shore.

Frozen shores of Lake Ontario with Robot Butterfly in the snow

At that point in time (early March), the monarch butterflies were preparing to depart their overwintering location to begin the grand migration, with their descendants returning back to Canada for the summer.

Check out our @RobotInThePark Instagram in the meantime for more photos*

*Note: Our Instagram has been quiet lately as firmware has been the main focus during March

Tett Centre Artist in Residence

Photo of the Tett Centre, beautiful limestone building with glimpses of the waterfront in the background, and a rainbow arching over the malting tower

Tett Centre building with a rainbow arching over the malting tower.

Credit: Tett Centre website

Next week, the robots will be rolling in to the Tett Centre for Creativity and Learning in Kingston, Ontario, Canada! I’m one of the 2025 Artists in Residence, a program that offers emerging local artists the space to explore, create, grow, and share over the course of three months.

During the residency, my project will focus on designing and building three new robot creatures based on the Robot Butterfly platform. Each robot creature will draw inspiration from the natural world, with its own unique character. I’m especially excited about collaborating with fellow artists and embedding the robots into natural environments (with tools easily accessible in the studio space in case the robots need a tune up in the field).

Robot in the Park icon, a lil green tree robot

A part of the residency is sharing the work, bringing it into natural spaces where people can discover and engage with it! This will be the first event of Robot in the Park, a self-guided adventure with robots nestled into the natural landscape waiting to be discovered, complete with bits of nature knowledge at the waypoints. There will be a new Robot in the Park event every month, each one bringing something fresh to the experience, such as a new robot creature or updated design! Robot in the Park is an evolution of Bowie the robot’s Field Tests.

The dates for Robot in the Park are still in the works. In the meantime, if you’d like to get prepared to be notified when the events are happening, here are the places to watch for updates:

Happy Birthday MANOI!

Collage featuring photos of MANOI, see below for captions

Left: MANOI with its hockey stick and Wii Nunchuck, Top right: MANOI with its RGB LED necklace and IR distance sensor headband, Bottom right: Wires and electronics as MANOI’s backpack

Happy Robot Birthday to my humanoid robot MANOI! 🥳 Turning 18 years! 🎈🤩

MANOI is known for its hockey playing abilities, equipped with sensors on its hockey stick and controlled by a Nintendo Wii Nunchuck. 🏒

Robot bird character, constructed out of felt and pencils, in the foreground, and MANOI the humanoid robot, wearing a festive hat, dancing with its arms extended in the background

Pencil RoboBrrd and MANOI, connected wirelessly through an XBee mesh network

A notable experiment with MANOI was the mesh network with pencil RoboBrrd. Interacting with one robot would trigger an action on the other robot, wirelessly using XBees. It showed what could be possible with robots working together, even in different form factors.

MANOI made its debut appearance to an audience at the Ottawa Mini Maker Faire in 2010 at Artengine! Plus, made appearances on the Robot Party and Adafruit Show n Tell.

MANOI on a table with a classic mini red tin toolbox in the background

MANOI at Mini Maker Faire Ottawa in 2010 at Artengine

I modified the kit (saved up for with money from editing podcasts and macromedia flash animations) to use an Arduino Mega and a serial servo controller. Back then, the RGB LEDs did not have a controller chip such as the WS2812B's, so it really leveraged all the IO that the Mega offers. Someone from the 'Lets Make Robots' community laser cut a neon green back plate for MANOI which helped contain all the wires in place (somewhat, haha). More sensors were added as well, to make MANOI interact with the world.

To top it all off, a highlight was meeting the maker of the MANOI kit at RoboGames! They helped repair one of MANOI's servo motor gears. The international collaboration for robot building blew my mind! This took place during the incredible experience of being an Artist in Residence at Evil Mad Scientist, and getting there was thanks to a grant from Awesome Kingston.

What a great learning experience! Somehow, despite the many falls MANOI had, it kept on working!

Firmware Folklore

Blue electronics circuit board with an ESP32 microcontroller being inserted into headers

The ESP32 microcontroller on Keystone, which connects to Chonky aka Robot Butterfly’s brain. This is where the firmware ‘lives’ when it is uploaded to the robot

Last month’s newsletter mentioned the ongoing firmware work. A chunk of Robot Butterfly’s firmware has been completed. These are separate ‘sandbox’ sketches that have individual functionality. The next task is to integrate all those pieces into one codebase. This method helps isolate any issues that arise, especially in a system with multiple peripherals and actuators. Following that, wrapping it in FreeRTOS API’s to take advantage of ESP32’s multiple cores — something that I used to dream about when making RoboBrrd!

Screenshot of text from firmware development

Sneak peek of the enumerated values for Robot Butterfly’s servo animations

Updates

Apisuru received a shoutout on the Open Source Hardware Certifications for February 2025 on MAKE Magazine

Onwards

Looking forward to the warmer temperatures and bringing the robots outdoors into the fresh air for longer durations! ☀️🌷😃

The next edition of the Field Robot Chronicles is scheduled for the 26th of April. We’ll likely pop in with a quick note before then to let you know the date and time of the very first Robot in the Park event. Stay tuned!

Until next time,

- Erin RobotZwrrl

Hiya Erin Kennedy! You are receiving this because *unrolls a long papyrus scroll and checks notes*

Erin’s talk at TEDxOttawa (virtual) - 2020

This newsletter dispatches approximately once per month — unless one of our robots does something particularly epic — and includes highlights from our community events (Robot In The Park) and behind the scenes updates on our robot development (Robot Missions).

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