Archive for the ‘Mechanical Design’ Category

Four legged walking robot

Sunday, November 15th, 2009

Here is my first design of four-legged walking mobile robot with infrared sensor. It was able to move around the room and avoid obstacles.

Four-legged walking robot

Four-legged walking robot

One more picture:

dsci0002

Front view of the robot

What does my Mobile robot consist of?

Tuesday, July 28th, 2009

Well, I received a nice message yesterday at facebook with a question what does my mobile robot consist of?

So below you would find the full information about it:

Lets start:

  • Mobile platform - caterpillar mobile platform, very stable and easy to control
  • Main Controller - Arduino board Deciemila, nice and easy to program and use. I think to install one more for strategic level control, probably one more would be used for some tactical control. Allover 3 controllers are planed to be used, for the moment only one is used.
  • Motor Controller- Type SaberTooth, for 12V DC motor control -  the RF version.
  • Communication between computer and mobile robot is made on the basis of Xbee shield for Arduino
  • 9 V NiMh battery -  will be changed to 12 or 14V one because more power is necessary.
  • HMC - magnetic compass with I2C protocol.
  • Two Hall sensors for velocity measurement, and two magnets for each caterpillar (get the linear velocity)… more magnets needed, and by using magnets it is necessary to recalibrate the compass.
  • Camera tower with two cameras, one wireless for operator, one for internal robots use… , IR distance measurer with I2C interface.

So these are all components at the moment.

Now the problem how to make them work together :) Please check the updates regularly, later I will publish algorithms for motion control of the robot by velocity(speed) and trajectory.

My Mobile Robot Development

Monday, June 1st, 2009

Here is the robot I work now on:

Front View

Front View

As you can see on the picture it has caterpillar chassis for better passability, 2 degree of freedom turret  with two cameras installed, one camera for teleoperator other for internal AI usage. For navigation purposes electronic compass was installed connected to Arduino controller, as a power supply NiCd battery is used, mounted on the lower deck.

Side view

Side view

The camera with antenna is the one for operator’s use.

Top view

Top view

On the top view one can see two motors for propulsion, motor control circuit and below the motor  control circuit you can see Arduino board. Below you can see motor controller closer.

Controller view

Controller view

Some old mechanical design

Wednesday, May 20th, 2009

My old mobile robot mechanical design.

You can see encoders, sensors and control system based on Arduino controller.

mobot mechanical design

mobot mechanical design

Here you can see battery and Arduino control board

Here you can see battery and Arduino control board

Encoder with sensor module, leds are made to indicate when sensor module works.

Encoder with sensor module, leds are made to indicate when sensor module works.

Mechanical Design

Sunday, May 10th, 2009

Here I will add some Mechanical Design Concepts and ideas. Your are welcome to comment.