Perseus 3 - Windows Mobile robot with Camera, WLAN and Phone

[radhoo]

A few months ago I've posted some other platforms I've been working on, all made from scratch:

Ara (http://www.societyofrobots.com/robotforum/index.php?topic=8523.msg66293#msg66293)
and
Twinmotion (http://www.societyofrobots.com/robotforum/index.php?topic=7435.msg56990#msg56990)

With a few changes made to ARA (4 geared motors instead of two, one for each wheel), I've made another step with my Perseus robots saga (http://www.pocketmagic.net/?p=520) , and put together Perseus 3.



Features:
- powerful propulsion given by 4 geared motors (see platform)
- differential control (tank like), driven by a dual 10A HBridge  (see schematics)
- atmega8 board for gathering sensor data and sending commands to the HBridge
- bluetooth interface for the atmega8
- Smartphone running Windows Mobile 6.0, basically this is the wonder: a small processing unit, low power requirements, capable of providing a 200MHz embedded CPU, WLAN, Bluetooth (for atmega8 interlink), Camera, Phone, Speakerphone, Microphone and so on.

I have some experience programming for Windows Mobile, so I'll start the brain coding part.
It should include image processing, voice command recognition and other advanced features to turn this robot into an autonomous one.
Currently I've been able to use the robot by remote control (Direct link from my computer over bluetooth and using Hyperterminal) and get the images from the smartphones camera using the WLAN and direct IP connection.

Progress can be tracked here, or on my blog: http://www.pocketmagic.net/?p=869

Looking forward to your suggestions!

[4by4]

This is an interesting bit of work you've done. I don't know that much about smartphones. Would you care to comment on the cost trade of using a smartphone (+ SDK + network subscription) versus doing the video processing in a stationary host PC, with a wireless video camera on the robot transmitting video to the PC.

[radhoo]

Thanks.

Price wise (and I'm only considering the Hardware) , the smartphone solution approach is very competitive when compared to an ARM board.
Using a Smartphone you get a fast CPU (up to 600MHz), a color LCD, WLAN, Bluetooth, etc etc, all connected together and working, and most important: optimized for low power consumption.

Using a single board computer, developing drivers for every module takes considerable time. Since you can actually get smartphones on ebay for less then 100bucks, I'd say the choice is clear.

Regarding the Software: you can boot linux on most smartphone (this is you don't like WinMobile), or if you stick to Windows Mobile, there are free tools as well, see :
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=1DACDB3D-50D1-41B2-A107-FA75AE960856&displaylang=en


Now about the stationary host PC, I did that as well, and the good part was the great processing power of a PC, and the freedom in choosing the processing tools, however I do believe making a robot autonomous is more important.