Cycler Presentation Robot - designed and constructed by David Buckley	2002/3
- the Future is here now -

Cycler is a state of the art presentation robot specially designed and built for the environment and education charity Waste Watch www.wastewatch.org.uk to bring their waste prevention message of Reduce, Reuse and Recycle to schools around the country.
See Waste Watch's reCycler page.

Waste Watch have three Cyclers operating in different parts of the U.K. and for identification the Cyclers are named Shakespeare, Byron and Shelley.

Update 2006 - WRAP are now funding Waste Watch's Cycler project and have renamed Cycler as recycler . On their 'recycler' in action page there is a video of recycler lecturing in a school. See stills from the video of recycler's forty five minute presentation.

On the Cycler Videos page are two videos from Waste Watch's party celebrating their Cycler education program's tenth year. These show the three Cyclers together performing their 'Special song' and a shortened version of their presentation.

download the video (.wmv 185k)

How Cycler works
To aid Cycler in his job he needs a handler who tells him what to do by using a concealed radio control transmitter.
He has five microcontrollers for a brain and nervous system; an MP3 sound file player, amplifier and speakers to allow him to talk; and seven electric motors to make him move.
The handler can make Cycler drive around, move his arms, move his head and has full control over the MP3 player allowing highly interactive dialogs to take place.
In between being told what to do Cycler runs his own inbuilt personality program which makes him look around, moving and flashing his eyes, whilst moving his head and arms; for practical reasons Cycler is not allowed to drive about unless specifically ordered to do so by his handler. This personality program enables the handler to have both hands in view whilst Cycler continues to move speak and generally look alive thus aiding the presentation.

download the video (.wmv 77k)