Cycler Presentation Robot - designed and constructed by David Buckley	2002/3
- the Future is here now -

Cycler is a state of the art presentation robot specially designed and built for the environment and education charity Waste Watch www.wastewatch.org.uk to bring their waste prevention message of Reduce, Reuse and Recycle to schools around the country.

2015 - The ReCycler project was ended in November by Keep Britain Tidy who had taken over Waste Watch and the last remaining handler and the Cycler robots retired.

Waste Watch have three Cyclers operating in different parts of the U.K. and for identification the Cyclers are named Shakespeare, Byron and Shelley.

2013 - Now after ten years of operation the three Cycler robos have performed their 45 minute shows before about one and a half million children.

2006 - WRAP took over funding of Waste Watch's Cycler project and renamed Cycler as recycler . They used to have a 'recycler' in action page with a video of recycler lecturing in a school. See stills from the video of recycler's forty five minute presentation.

2005 14th March - Cycler Shakespeare appeared on the 4000^th episode of Blue Peter - see the Cycler videos page.

2004 19th October - Waste Watch celebrated their Cycler education program's tenth year. On the Cycler videos page are two videos from the party which show the three Cyclers together performing a special presentation.

2003 26th March - Cyclers' launch in the Houses of Parliament with Michael Meecher MP.

download the video (.wmv 185k)

How Cycler works
To aid Cycler in his job he needs a handler who tells him what to do by using a concealed radio control transmitter.
He has five microcontrollers for a brain and nervous system; an MP3 sound file player, amplifier and speakers to allow him to talk; and seven electric motors to make him move.
The handler can make Cycler drive around, move his arms, move his head and has full control over the MP3 player allowing highly interactive dialogs to take place.
In between being told what to do Cycler runs his own inbuilt personality program which makes him look around, moving and flashing his eyes, whilst moving his head and arms; for practical reasons Cycler is not allowed to drive about unless specifically ordered to do so by his handler. This personality program enables the handler to have both hands in view whilst Cycler continues to move speak and generally look alive thus aiding the presentation.

download the video (.wmv 77k)