How to Test a Robot

Place obstacles on the floor of the testing area if you have a robot that is programmed to navigate from one location to another. The robot may use visual systems to navigate, follow GPS triangulation signals, or have a map of the environment in its memory that it attempts to follow. See whether the robot can get to its goal when an object is in the way, such as a traffic cone or a wooden box.

Put a variety of objects of different sizes, shapes, colors and weights on a table or on the ground if you want to test your robot's ability to discriminate among different objects. The robot could have grasping claws that it uses to pick up an object. It might have strain gauges that help it determine the object's weight and camera eyes to learn the item's color or shape. You could, for example, instruct the robot to find out which object is the heaviest, or to pick up a blue item out of a group of variously colored items.

Gather several people who have distinctive appearances from one another, such as a short man and a tall woman, thin and fat people, and people with different colored hair and clothing if you want to test your robot's ability to find a person and identify her by appearance or by voice. Have each person call out to the robot, to see if the robot can go to the correct person as identified by voice print or visual recognition.

Take apart a device and lay its components on a table if you are testing a robot that is designed to assemble objects from parts. Give the robot tools and see whether it can put together an object according to instructions or by figuring out the steps, based on its on-board data that indicates what the object should look like through each phase of assembly.