Sixth Formers Jack Ford and Matthew Cerniglia have built a quadrupedal robot dog for their graduation project. They control it with a PlayStation controller, and it can walk on flat or rough ground, turn in any direction, and even jump in place.
The idea came from the real robot dogs that companies such as Boston Dynamics make. Those robots have become popular over the last few years for their ability to go places that are not safe for people, including rough terrain, damaged buildings, or search-and-rescue sites. A robot dog can climb over obstacles and damaged terrain far more easily than their wheeled counterparts.
The motors, the circuit board, and the software Ford and Cerniglia used are the same kinds of parts that would have been used by a company or university.
The robot has four legs, and each leg bends at its knee joint, similar to a human knee. All of the electronics sit inside the body, including the batteries and the motherboard that controls it. The legs work together so that the dog stays balanced while it moves. Two legs stay on the ground while the other two step forward, which keeps it steady and lets it move at a decent speed.
Neither Ford nor Cerniglia was taught many of these skills in school. Ford taught himself to code in seventh grade by watching YouTube, building his own projects, and leading the school’s VEX robotics team. He spent last summer working with robot dogs at the University of Pennsylvania, and he is continuing his education at the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University. Cerniglia ran the design and building side of the project and has made similar technology before, including a humanoid robot head and a chessboard that can tell where the pieces are by using magnets.
The hardest part was not the design or the math. It was getting everything to work at the same time.
“It’s a lot of moving parts,” Cerniglia said.
The robot uses twelve motors, and all of them have to listen to one computer. A single loose wire or a motor that quits could stop the whole process.
“Find a project you think is interesting and go after it.”
JACK FORD ’26
Building this robot has been a learning process in itself, and it certainly does not come free of regrets. Ford said he would make the dog smaller, since the current one is heavy and the weight is hard on the motors. Cerniglia said he would build it out of metal instead of plastic. Currently, every part is 3D printed, and metal was the original plan before time and cost became a problem.
Neither Ford nor Cerniglia is taking the robot with them when they graduate. Both have been showing underclassmen how it works, and some underclassmen have even helped put the legs together and assisted with other aspects. The plan is to leave the robot behind so the incoming upper school students can keep working on it and take it further.
“Find a project you think is interesting and go after it,” Ford said.
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