Vikis, Lesė and Reksas are robot-dogs of VIKO Robotics Workshop
The VIKO Robotics Workshop team is currently actively applying a new robotic platform in the study process. These are the new robot-dogs. Yes, yes, they are robots belonging to the class of general-purpose mobile robots, which have four independently moving limbs. They have integrated sensors that allow the robot to “feel” and experience the environment and react to dynamic changes in the environment: to bypass obstacles in the path of the robot’s movement, to follow a given object while moving behind it or next to it.
According to P. Šakalis, head of the Electronics and Computer Engineering Department of Vilnius University of Applied Sciences, “these robot-dogs are an important part of the study process. The manufacturer presents this type of robots to the market as a universal device for both professional programming skills development activities and educational and general use. The range of use is incredibly wide: with the help of robot-dogs, it is possible to carry out expeditionary tasks in search and rescue missions, to carry out inspections of the condition of active nodes of special-purpose engineering objects, they can even be integrated into the process of training specialists in the engineering field or just everyday domestic life of a person, helping people with mobility or visual impairment to cross the street or simply carry a shopping cart.”
The team of the Robotics Workshop of the Faculty of Electronics and Informatics of VIKO acquired these robot-dogs because of the inexhaustible possibilities of engineering challenges. According to Mr. Šakalis, “these pets of ours are excellent prototypes, in other words, a basic platform that helps us train highly qualified engineering specialists who are able to implement improvement work in the electronic, computer, control and network communication fields.” This is a real example of scientific applied activity: together with students, we are developing the integration of artificial intelligence algorithms for image recognition, when the goal is to enable a robot or a group of robots to move autonomously (independently) along a preliminarily specified trajectory without any external human intervention, for mutual data transfer using cloud computing, when part of the power supply needed by the robot is provided by the patented electricity generation technologies of our team members.” Sudents of VIKO Computer Engineering and Electronics Engineering study programs actively work with robot-dogs, which is creativity, practical activity, and an engaging engineering challenge.