The idea that I have as a final project is to make a robot with the form of a cuy, to bring technology to the rural population of my country and improve their quality of life.

Why a robot?

Robots have proven to be very important for many tasks. Tasks among which are toxic waste cleanup, search and rescue, environmental monitoring and location of landmines.

What is a cuy?

It is a rodent whose scientific name is Cavia Porcellus, originally from the Andean region of South America.

Why a cuy?

Because is an animal that is traditionally closely linked with the Andean culture. Culturally the cuy is used for different things, from food, to health. There is a custom called "pasada de cuy" consisting in rubbing the cuy over the sick body for disease's threatment.

Implications of the project:

At present, rural Peru lacks many services. I believe that robotics can help improve the people's quality of life in these villages. But to do so, it is required to approach the technologies involved in this project so, this approach should be non-invasive. One way is to rely on a representative figure of their culture, therefore I chose the cuy. This robot can serve for educational and recreational purposes, but can also be used for tasks above mentioned.

Next Step:

After Academy, I will use the knowledge learned in another project for a contest called VIDA, which is on artificial life and art. For this I will add a module to the robot for rapid disease detection. It would be based on image processing techniques. My idea is to link this ancient tradition of "pasada de cuy" with the robot I'm making.

Technical References:

Design
The design of the structure and the mechanism will be made in SolidWorks.

Mechanism
A variation of Theo Jansen mechanism. This mechanism is very famous for being intuitive, because it simulates the natural movement of animal.

Electronics
The engine that I will use will be a DC motor, which require an H bridge for controlling the direction of rotation of the motor, power circuit and a control circuit. For control I will use my own version of Arduino.

The next scheme is the Gantt chart of the project: