and a ROBOT?….DESTROY DESTROY…

April 24th, 2005

*link temporarily broken*

http://homepage.mac.com/dgiessel/.Movies/a_robot.mov

Note the awesome payload delivery crane using magnets and such. We worked hard to make it look like we didn’t do any work (we don’t have servos and detectors on the robot itself to see where to deliver the payload…but it would have been way easier to do so).

What really made the whole thing come together tonight (there were some…missing pieces of the algorithm shall we say) was modifying the payload sensor (one of the fairchild units) to be a front wall detector (note how it bumps along the walls). You can see it in the pictures below on the front of the thing (the emitter and detector are exposed). It’s the perfect bump sensor…and it remains analog so I can just change the threshold in software.

Here’s a gallery with pics of the completed unit and pics of the French guy’s micromouse negotiating our 10×10 maze.

[url=http://homepage.mac.com/dgiessel/.Pictures/misc/a_robot/index.html]hot robot on maze action[/url]

-Tycho

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Robot Rev2

April 5th, 2005

Well the steppers didn’t pan out so well. High heat during prolonged use resulted in rotor slip.

So… [url=http://homepage.mac.com/dgiessel/.Public/robot/index.html]here are some pics of our new servo bot[/url]. It’s the aluminum one. The black plastic one that is so beautifully constructed is that of UAF’s Micromouse team (David and Bruno).

Should be a quick lil “b.” Our weight is about 1/3 that of our competitors and our servos are rated at 4x the rotational speed with 85% the torque rating of the ones other people are using. It is not pretty…but I think the functionality is there to represent on everyone’s face.

Sensor interfacing happens this weekend after I get the servo voltage regulators hooked up. Should be doing navigation by sunday. Possibly done a week after that (tuned algorithms)…

-Tycho

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