Grad Students Program Robots for Extreme Makeover Home Edition
6/25/2012 By Kathryn L. Heine
Drew Coverdill and Ken Heinz stand outside the refurbished Montgomery home. This August, a van full of donated robots landed graduate students Ken Heinz and Drew Coverdill a role in ABC’s TV show Extreme Makeover Home Edition. The show had come to Philo, Illinois, to film thousands of volunteers as they transformed a local family’s home into the home of their dreams. When a generous company donated about a dozen robots to the project, no one knew what to do with them.
Written by By Kathryn L. Heine
Drew Coverdill and Ken Heinz stand outside the refurbished Montgomery home.
Drew Coverdill and Ken Heinz stand outside the refurbished Montgomery home.
This August, a van full of donated robots landed graduate students Ken Heinz and Drew Coverdill a role in ABC’s TV show Extreme Makeover Home Edition. The show had come to Philo, Illinois, to film thousands of volunteers as they transformed a local family’s home into the home of their dreams. When a generous company donated about a dozen robots to the project, no one knew what to do with them. So, the design producer of the show started dialing numbers at the University of Illinois. The trail of phone calls eventually led to MechSE graduate students Ken Heinz and Drew Coverdill.
Heinz and Coverdill agreed to volunteer their time to assemble and program the robots, so that they would be up and running when the Montgomery family arrived for the final revealing. They were then given one week to turn the mixed bag of children’s toys, hobby robots and educational robotics into something that would really “wow” the Montgomery son when he walked into his new bedroom for the first time.
For the show, the robots had to be entertaining, so Heinz and Coverdill focused their efforts on the most visual candidates. Among their top picks were a humanoid robot that moved its head, torso, and appendages with the same degree of freedom as a human and a tank-drive robot with a gripper arm and wireless camera that they hooked up to the home’s TV system. The latter was even easy enough for the show’s host, Ty Pennington, to operate after a one-on-one lesson with Coverdill.
“It was a cool experience working in such a frantic environment,” Coverdill said. “We had to learn how to explain things quickly to people who didn’t understand what we were talking about.”
Heinz added that it was illuminating to step out of the academic environment and see how people outside it view technology. “When everyone’s on the cutting edge, it’s hard to impress them,” he said. “So, it was fun to see people blown away by what we consider ‘simple robotics’.”
“It helped us appreciate how much technical knowledge we’ve gained in the six years we’ve been in the department,” Coverdill said.
Heinz and Coverdill are looking forward to seeing the boy’s reaction to the robots once the show airs on October 25. “We left our contact information, so he can reach us if he wants to learn more about the robots,” Coverdill said.