Squirt: The Prototypical Mobile Robot for Autonomous Graduate Students

Abstract

This paper describes an exercise in building a complete robot aimed at being as small as possible but using off-the-shelf components exclusively. The result is an autonomous mobile robot slightly larger than one cubic inch which incorporates sensing, actuation, onboard computation, and onboard power supplies. Nicknamed Squirt, this robot acts as a 'bug', hiding in dark corners and venturing out in the direction of last heard noises, only moving after the noises are long gone.