Recent comments

Thank you.  I hope to have some videos soon.  The software I am developing in MS Visual Studio 2010, in Visual Basic.  MS Robotics Studio uses the .net framework, so in that sense it is similar. 

I forgot to mention the eyes are a webcam and PING sonar unit from Parallax. 

Neato Patent Application on Slam and XV-11

Hey guys.  I located three patent applications by Neato.  Tons of info and drawings.  Good flow diagrams etc.

The base was cut from 6mm medium density fibre board (MDF) with a dremel and cutting bit. I made a jig with pieces of scrap timber to ensure that the cuts were accurate and smooth, and I cut all three decks at the same time. (The robot only has one deck so far.)

The wheels are small trolley wheels that I bought for a few dollars from the hardware store, however I sculpted and smoothed the centres with the dremel and a grinding wheel to get the clean lines. The unmodified wheels had radiating ridges which would have prevented them from being mounted on those hubs.

Another of my robots called "Ally" uses a larger type of trolley wheel which can be clearly seen in this photo on my home page where I used to post my robot projects http://asmith.id.au/ally-base.html

First we got the motor housing and the serving trey cleaned up and put back together. Then Steve Alaniz, one of our volunteers, got DC-1 running under remote control! There are pictures and a video here:

 http://agc.dyndns-work.com/rep/robots/dc-1/

Look for:

2011-04-15 Motor base installed.jpg - the motor housing cleaned up and reinstalled.

DC-1 running.wmv, a short movie of DC-1 operating under remote control;

Steve Alaniz.JPG, who donated the remote control unit and 6 volt battery and made connectors to adapt to the older Futaba motor controls.

Steve's Wall-e.JPG, a picture of Steve’s personal project, a modified Wall-E toy.

So which motor bracket did you use?  The u-chanel on your web site or the J bracket on the site you linked too or the store bought ones. 

That J bracket looks nice and pretty easy to make as long as the motor shaft is long enough.

Fire Blow do good performance in Mindspark. reach the final round but lose there. Well it was a good experience for me

The brownish stuff is cooked Radio Shack flux paste. I use it because it helps stick parts in place before I reflow. I've tried using my Kester flux pen but it doesn't seem to perform as well for reflow. I guess the 'right' way to do it is to use solder paste, so I might look into that in the future.

Dear JarDogBox,

Well, you're right. It wàs a lot of work (fifteen months to be exact, that is for the treads alone), but then you end up with something... And yes, that is the 'bare' URL of my site. There's another at : http://home.tiscali.nl/janvr/mouse . That's the story of a robotic mouse we used in an adventure game in our city. Again, all hand made.

Jan

Hi guys!

The treads are hand made of all individual brass segments with steel pins. The sprockets, I had them made at a local factory that has a laser cutter, since they have to be accurate and are made of 4 mm. thick stainless steel, which is a bit hard to work on.The camera is a CMU-cam II, and finally the sensor opposite to the camera is a PIR sensor (Eltec Instruments 442-3, (see www.acroname.com). All details can be seen on my site, with full comment : www.jcvr.demon.nl. Software is still in the making, but good progress is being made.

Cheers! Jan

We now have a group of about 5 local guys who are interested in this project. One of them came by today to get up-close-and-personal with DC-1. He brought a VEX Cortex controller with him. We had to kludge the control cables since they are slightly different than the VEX pin-outs. We were able to hook up the control unit to the existing MC4-20 motor controllers and verify that they are working. His remote controller was able to make the motors run forward and backward. The right gear sounded a bit noisy, especially in reverse. Probably they could use a good cleaning and lubrication after 30 years of use and storage. If it will not clean up then we may have to replace it.

We need to decide what controller we should use. There have been several suggestions: "car" pr or other x86 system; Infocast (Chumby); VEX; Fez Panda, Arduino; AVR (Atmel); IFI controller; Any comments on the options that were presented?

Steve said he can provide a rechargeable battery that will fit in the unit. We may have to pad it some and it is smaller. 

I will begin to work on general refurbishing of the motor and battery mounting hardware. 

The acrylic top has some scratching. I have read that such scratches can be polished out, but I have not had much luck on the pieces I have tried. Anybody have any hints on such things?

Been very busy on the robot. I've updated the page to reflect the robot's current state.  I've switched over to mbed, with all the custom boards built and populated. GPS module(s) installed and tested, gyro, compass have been added. Just added wheel encoders this evening. The hard part is still left: the code to estimate vehicle state (position, velocity, heading, etc) and the code to proportionally correct heading (steer) and accelerate/brake/decelerate as needed for cornering, etc., not to mention the very hardest part: obstacle avoidance!