Although members of the school’s Soft Robotics Group, known colloquially as “Soft Robotics,” are no longer experimenting with soft materials for their robots, they carry on the group’s legacy of innovation and problem-solving.
Since last October, Soft Robotics’ members Sixth Former Finn Kelly and Fifth Formers Jack Ford and Matthew Cerniglia have worked to design and build what they have coined the “Chess Bot.”
“The robot can play an entire game of chess against a human player on a physical board,” Ford said. “It reads human moves, finds the best possible response, and physically moves a piece on the board.”
The robot uses linear rails and a belt system to move a “piece grabber” around the board. Kelly, Ford, and Cerniglia took inspiration from the design of 3D printers present in the Soft Robotics shop.
“We saw that a 3D printer was, down to its most abstract form, a piece that moved along three of linear rails that acted as axes,” Kelly said. “With these rails, the 3D printer could really reach anywhere on the board.”
Initially, the group planned on using a robotic arm to move the pieces.
“We started with an arm that rotated on two joints and used inverse kinematics to move to each square,” Ford said. “Pieces were picked up using an electromagnet and a pinion gear with a servo to make a linear actuator. The arm didn’t work because the weight of the electromagnet couldn’t be supported, so it toppled over.”
The team scrapped the idea, keeping only the electromagnetic piece grabber, before coming up with their final design. They used computer-aided design programs such as TinkerCad and Fusion360 to plan their work.
“The electromagnet’s convenient to work with because we can send a computer signal to instantly turn on and turn off the magnet at any time,” Kelly said.
Besides powering the electromagnet, computer signals also control the entire robot. Ford programmed a custom chess library and paired it with Stockfish, an open-source chess engine, to create the robot’s AI.
“It was really challenging creating the software,” Ford said. “Integrating all parts of the robot, like reading board position, updating the virtual chess game, finding the best legal move, moving the machine, all in an efficient and accurate manner was really hard. The program went through a ton of iterations.”
Still, Ford’s hard work led to success.
“My favorite part of the robot is the way we hooked it up to an external chess AI that Jack designed,” Kelly said. “All we need to do is input what move the human made, and the software does the rest. It makes a move on its own and moves the piece of the desired square with no further input.”
The design is not only an efficient chess robot machine, but also applicable to other aspects of life.
“It can be applied to different applications. For instance, by attaching a scalpel, our robot could become a highly accurate medical device,” Ford said. “Or, by attaching a pen, we could use it to draw or replicate human handwriting.”
The team is proud of the product that a year of engineering produced.
“If you told me when I was a freshman that I would be designing and building a robot that played chess against you within four years,” Kelly said, “I would have never believed you.”
Ford echoed a similar sentiment.
“To anybody who wants to learn about engineering, programming, and technology, my advice is this: the internet is your greatest asset,” Ford said. “We live in an age where the average person has access to instant knowledge and education through a device in their pocket. If you’re able to use the internet, and have a desire to learn and understand complex ideas, you can achieve anything.”
