Wall Seeking Agrophobic Robot

[Webbot]

Thought I'd share with you my experience of building a 'bot.

Started with the $50 robot circuit but used a larger board which has each group of three holes in a row connected together. This made the soldering easier - didn't have to make solder jump from one pad to the next nor worry about what to do when you managed to burn the copper pad off of the board! Also gave me extra room to have a header for every possible I/O port as well as some extra 5v supply headers for extra bits and bobs in the future like lcd power supplies. So its a kind'o'maxed out bread-board for future projects.

The wheels are CD shaped HDPE wihich have been roughed up on the edges with a file for a bit of grip. Battery pack has been secured with velcro and the 9v battery is housed in a 'tool clip' from a DIY store.

For the spacers I used a long piece of rawl plug (for putting screws into walls) that can be sawn off to whatever length you need.

OK - its not pretty but its my proto-typing board for the future.

So here are some pics - and more info to follow.

[Webbot]

So here's the vid of my wall seeking robot.

[youtube]6LqoQ6cYBeo[/youtube]

Awesome - it goes straight for the wall !!

But after a while this gets a bit dull to watch.

So have thought about smothering the bot with sensors. See attached pic. One SRF05 sonar and 2 x Infra Reds - cannot go wrong. Will post a vid once its all programmed.

[Webbot]

So all the sensors have been added and voila:-

[youtube]_Lt6niPqoWw[/youtube]

Hmmm - it seems to hunt (washing) machines rather than walls! What a waste of money on all those sensors. But wait ... perhaps I have to write some code for the sensors. Can't hurt.


My first attempt just resulted in AgrophobicBot. It just saw all that stuff out there and didn't want to move. Feel like I'm going in circles...
[youtube]kUENny8qrdk[/youtube]


So I ended up with this...which seems to want to avoid things like walls, chair legs etc. So it just keeps going till the batteries run out (is that good?).
[youtube]2Pzw2EjMmd8[/youtube]


So, now that it works'ish, I just need to come up with a smaller version than my big-breadboard circuit. So looking at the $50 robot layout you will see that the servo pins are at the top left of the chip, and the analogue inputs are the top right few pins. The middle pins are +ve and ground. The bottom half of the pins are just used to programme it - and then are unused! Bonus - there is a +ve and ground on each side so, in theory, you could chop that sucka in half and use the bottom set of pins on the next project. Two Mega8s for the cost of one!! Perhaps a quad packaged 168 could be chopped in 4 ?!

This is where I made the cut (ed - for GODs SAKE DON'T DO THIS!).

[Webbot]

I'm just hoping that the rest of the world also knows this date (1 April) as Aprils Fool Day - and is a day for 'white lies'.

So, whether or not, hope you enjoyed the ride !!

[DC-Electronics]

Thats not a very good April fools joke......
Now if the admin replaced the website with that of a nature enthusiasts site that would be funny.
We could talk about such exciting things as:
Nature walks
Not using electricity
Canoes
Camping
Bugs
etc

How many of us would shit our pants if we came to Society Of Robots and found some kind if tree hugging website instead?

[airman00]

Thats not a very good April fools joke......
Now if the admin replaced the website with that of a nature enthusiasts site that would be funny.
We could talk about such exciting things as:
Nature walks
Not using electricity
Canoes
Camping
Bugs
etc

How many of us would shit our pants if we came to Society Of Robots and found some kind if tree hugging website instead?

LMAO

post it in my post related to April Fools in the Misc. section

[Admin]

lol, wall seeking robot . . .

Set your standards low, and you can accomplish anything!

btw, nice job on the bot design

[maverick monk]

ya, making a wall seeking robot is easy, just tell it to find somthing else and avoid walls, I garentee in the first 10 seconds you will find a wall, :p thts how mine work...

[Tsukubadaisei]

Sorry, but what does agrophobic mean and what does it have to do with the robot? I am not english native speaker I cant find this word in my dictionary.

[Webbot]

Agrophobic means that it has 'a fear of open spaces'

[skatj]

lol.. I liked it