Back in 2006, the Meccano’s Spykee robot was first conceived by Erector designers. After more than a year, they brought forth the first spy robot called Spykee controlled by WiFi link. It contains a webcam, a microphone and speakers. Controlled by computer locally or over the internet, the owner can move the robot to various locations within range of the local router, take pictures and videos, listen to surroundings and make sounds through the microphone or through various built-in recordings (Robot laugh, lazer guns, etc.)

In order to explore how this comprehensive spy robot works, a Spykee robot was “dissected”. As we explore the anatomy of this creature, we will go into more detail on the recent robotics technologies.

The general layout after the robot gets assembled is depicted as shown in Fig. 1:

We’ll talk about each of the major “organ” systems in detail, as we delve into its inner structure.

First, upon opening the packaging box of Spykee robot, we will see all the parts well packed in different layers of corrugated boxes. It includes a base main body, a Spykee’s “head” and “neck”, a box of plastic building parts and accessories and an assembly instruction shown in Fig. 2. A battery charger and plastic parts for building robot’s upper body are included in the box shown in Fig. 3.

Head (Eyes and ears)

The Spykee robot’s head features a built-in video camera, a microphone and a flash light as shown in Fig.4. The audio and video information are transmitted to the main base body via a mini-USB cable. The cable is well arranged and protected by a rubber-like plastic “neck” shown in Fig. 5.

Main Body

The main body of Spykee is shown in Fig. 6 (Top view) and Fig. 7 (Bottom view). The speaker is located in the front of robot and an IR window on the back will direct the robot to the charger base by itself when battery is low. A mini-USB port on the top is to connect the cable with the “head”. Four LED lights are recognized for status check.

The Spykee’s anatomy is shown in Fig. 8.

Walking and locomotion system

By utilizing heavy duty rubber tracks with durable ABS molded sprockets and wheels (shown in Fig. 9) the robot has an excellent traction. Both drive wheels are driven by gear head DC motors independently (shown in Fig. 10). By controlling and differentiating the speed of motors, the robot can easily move and turn in any directions. Encoders are attached to the end of motors and give feedback signals to the main control PCB board.

Mouth

A loudspeaker (8 Ohm 2W) is mounted onto the main body top cover shown in Fig. 11.

Brain and Nervous system

Spyekee robot possesses many amazing functions with its well developed brain and nervous systems. The main controller, brain of the robot, features 200MHz ARM9 central processing unit and 32MB SDRAM. It processes all the externally input information such as sound and image, sends commands to output devices like dual motors and speaker upon user’s request. Like nerve fibers, the signals for these buses spread throughout the robot on harnesses. The layout view is shown in Fig. 12.

Energy Supply

The Spykee robot uses a 9.6V NiMH battery for power supply (Shown in Fig. 13). It sits underneath the main controller PCB board. The included battery charger works from 100 to 240VAC so that the robot can be recharged in most of the regions around the world including Asia and Europe.

Hopefully, from this brief introduction we have gained a better understanding of what lies inside the Spykee robot and how it all works together.

Above all, the Meccano Spykee robot is an excellent robotics product in recent years. It combines latest video, audio and WiFi technologies with domestic robotics development. Users can even access and control Spykee via the Internet from anywhere in the world.

The Spykee Robot began shipping in North America in late 2008. It is now available for sale in RobotBuy Store at $349.99 CAD.