Implementing robots in hardware as a tool for integration

We suggest that integration in robotics research is facilitated and enhanced by the process of building embodied robots. It is in the translation of conceptual and simulated models into hardware that the integration takes place. Further, multiple techniques that address similar aspects of the same robotic task have to be merged to achieve good overall performance. In this paper we present two examples of successful integration and cross platform validation namely: 1. A walking and a wheeled robot used for planetary exploration (both used the same obstacle avoidance technique but the implementation was necessarily different) and, 2. Two robot helicopters (where behavior-based control used on the first robot is augmented using learning and enriched sensing on the second). The paper reports both case studies and discusses a list of lessons learned in the process of implementation.