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Take 5 minutes out of your day and watch my robot run into stuff.

yllus

yllus

Elite Member & Lifer
Hi. So I'm in this course that blends analog/digital circuitry, programming and engineering principles together. We call it CPS607. Well, er, anyways. For this lab (2nd of 5) we had to build a robot that would not fall off a table as well as detect and avoid obstacles placed in its way. Unfortunately, pretty much the only low-cost solution to detecting very light objects like you'll see in the video is infrared sensors - which I could not get a hold of in time. I'm in the dress shirt and pants...I had a thing to go to afterwards. 🙂

sully_quyen-divx.avi is my robot, and trailer_trash-divx.avi is perhaps the coolest robot EVAR.

http://www.scs.ryerson.ca/~s2syed/

Requires DivX 5.1.1. Audio is not required, but is recommended. 🙂

* To be constructed for the purposes of the course I am enrolled within.
 
Originally posted by: ArmenK
trailer trash is pretty cool. yours, not so much.
Click to expand...
Hey, I'd like to see you write code and build a robot that did all of that in ~4 hours. 😛
 
I used to do that kinda thing back in college (high school for you Americans) with very basic robots and BBC Micro computers, written entirely in Basic. Wish I'd done more of it now.
 
It never runs for more than three seconds without you picking it up.

Edit: How does the truck work? What sensor is that on the front of it?

I want to take that class.
 
Originally posted by: notfred
It never runs for more than three seconds without you picking it up.

Edit: How does the truck work? What sensor is that on the front of it?

I want to take that class.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I did that on purpose. 😀 My robot was rebuilt after my last lab very hastily, so I didn't want to let it careen around the table and potentially fall off if I could help it.

The truck - it's a infrared sensor that costs $17. I'm not sure how much the clicky swivel thing costs but likely not very much either. The sensor and swivel mount are both wired into a Miniboard, which is based on a Motorola 68xx chipset. The CPU comes ready to accept a limited amount of C functions specialized for robot manipulation. You also have the option of writing code for the robot directly in assembler.

What the truck peeps did was write a full truth table to analyze and take action based on what the infrared sensor saw at each point during its swivel. It's really an easier job than a non-programmer would think. The hardest part of that robot (and mine) was the chassis balancing. That center beam of theirs that shot out to allow it to swivel was genius, but had to be placed VERY carefully in order to not tip over the robot, especially if it was going to initiate a turn near the table's edge.

It is a fun course. It helps that the instructor is 27 years old and a cool guy. We had to pass the first lab or drop the course though, so all of these evaluations are pretty stressful...
 
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