Just thought I would add a quick introduction to my little family of robots.
I’ve always been interested in Electronics ( and actually started a Degree in Microelectronics and Information Processing at Brighton Polytechnic but took my year off after 2 years and never returned ..), anyway a few years ago I started playing around in the robotics sphere.
So here are the 3 in order of age :
Surveyor SRV-1
This is the only robot that I bought, basically a tracked vehicle with an ARM processor and camera. It can connect to a computer through WiFi and came with some utilities. What I really liked about it was that you could program it in C … Please do not confuse it with the many bots you can buy off the shelf as ‘Toys’, this was more aimed at the research / academic area. I was lucky enough to get one of the very first imported into this country.
Wire
This is my main robot :
This was my first robot that I designed and built, OK it is built from components that I can buy off the shelf but it is still quite advanced.
It’s ‘Brain’ is an old Asus 701 Notebook and it has machine vision from another ARM processor within the CMU Cam 3, an Orbit WebCam, Oopic microcontroller, 2 x Ultrasonic rangefinders. Basically it’s design was for a WIreless Remote Explorer .. Hence the name.
Whilst in range of a WiFi network it acts as a tele-presence machine, with the operator being able to see and hear everything the bot can as well as control it’s motion.
Out of WiFi reception it could use it’s sensors and visual systems to avoid contact and make it’s way to the next waypoint ( probably within a WiFi hotspot ).
CeeDee
So named because it was constructed from 2 CD’s :
This was basically built because I had some spare bits and pieces left over and wanted to have a go at a walking robot. As it stands it is just controlled by an Oopic ‘R’ controller and does not have any sensors. It was purely built to have fun with different walking gaits.
As I get time I’ll add more details on each, but my current thinking is to actually combine all the hardware into one ‘Test Bed’ robot