Author Topic: is this reasonable? (Read 3648 times)

jamort · « **on:** August 03, 2009, 10:06:15 PM »

ok so I'm still around my old home town until I go off to college in january and I'm still owrking with my old high school robotics team...
so whe I goto college I'm giving rid of all my stuff and the robotics club has two teams that friendly compete against each other, and I've challenged them to make a helicopter that has the abilty to dock its self to a battery charger... the already have autonomous flyers but they think this is a little over the top... what do yall think?

gaurav.p · « **Reply #1 on:** August 03, 2009, 11:45:01 PM »

it can be done i guess u have a lot of time .i have a idea where u can make the whole helipad conductive and when the tires (something metal )touches the pad then the electricity supplied to the pad will go to the charger through the metallic part attached near Tyre touching the surface to allow conductivity.how this ??
tell me if u like it or u have any other plan .

-gaurav

jamort · « **Reply #2 on:** August 04, 2009, 12:12:13 AM »

that was actually the idea i had... im not actually building but im mentoring the two teams about this and there competing for my stuff... yeah my old school sucks limited funds so im trying to help them out....
I was thinking having two kind of large disks that had ir sensors or something like in a spaure around them.... im still not sure were they have autonomuos fliers of how to locate were the charge pad is.... im trying not to be biased because i helped with electronics on one of the helis the year before.... im trying to get one of our videos to put on youtube for yalls viewing pleasure....

another idea... maybe have it split into two parts and one is for one wire one for the other... then have a collered piece of something and ones it finds the base it looks for that and then adjusts to four other colors surronding each side..... and maybe have it "talk" to a system controlling the charger and the charger not cut on until it gets the signal that the robot is ready

p.s. these guys(well two girls)(total.. two teams of ten) are really dedicated and meet 20-30 hours a week...

SmAsH · « **Reply #3 on:** August 04, 2009, 12:24:52 AM »

its possible... but how experienced is the team? is it a bunch of electronics monkeys, or a team of robot enthusiasts?

jamort · « **Reply #4 on:** August 04, 2009, 12:46:19 AM »

there all very experienced mainly 11 and 12th grade a like 3 ninth and tenth... there all robotics enthusiasts but they all bring there talents to the table(programminng, electronic, mechanics, etc.) the main reason im mentoring is because the old mentor was in a car wreck and like is still rehabilitating

SmAsH · « **Reply #5 on:** August 04, 2009, 01:11:10 AM »

ah ok, then this seems like a fair task to set them... (with your help of coarse)

jamort · « **Reply #6 on:** August 04, 2009, 01:24:33 AM »

lol but theyre acting like its hard... to me the only concern is going to be wait because i think they can only put about half a pound of electronics before it starts really affecting flight

SmAsH · « **Reply #7 on:** August 04, 2009, 01:32:37 AM »

what about if the control electronics are on the ground?
like, have something hooked up to the transmitter that knows where the base is, and it has to direct the robot to there?

jamort · « **Reply #8 on:** August 04, 2009, 01:56:08 AM »

maybe have the heli fly to a spot.. thats marked somehow then have a computer with camera vison directing the heli or something... I'm not sure I want to see with these guys can come up with... I know one thing though if it can be done... it shall be done... its kind of funny americas in a recession and these guys have 2000$ to blow on robotics for pre first season "practice".... idk im not scrambeling my brain as much as i did figuring out the programming for them to just fly..... well i got it to fly pretty easily but crashing was another thing

gaurav.p · « **Reply #9 on:** August 04, 2009, 03:48:19 AM »

2000$ for practice session that's a very very very big amt (for me ).hey if it is a specified path then u can easily program for by many trial and errors.for the charging pad ,Ur idea is good.have the team prototyped the idea.if yes can u please send the pictures ,i m eager to see it.

-gaurav

Joker94 · « **Reply #10 on:** August 04, 2009, 06:20:38 AM »

i think it can be done , like you said they all have there prefered areas and if they dellogate well enough they should be able to do it.

wil.hamilton · « **Reply #11 on:** August 04, 2009, 10:26:21 AM »

i dont think this is an unreasonable task. especially if they've built robot flyers before.

added in the ability to pinpoint a landing spot shouldn't be terribly difficult

jamort · « **Reply #12 on:** August 04, 2009, 04:15:17 PM »

lol well we had $5000 last year but did underwater robotics competiton and did farely well... but this is a nice project... I'll talk t tim whos on the team i think he may be creeping around this forum now... they all should soon i told them how great a sitre this is....

now it just measures the amount of battery power and land...

SmAsH · « **Reply #13 on:** August 05, 2009, 01:37:11 AM »

5K! damn jamort, where do you live?

Quote

now it just measures the amount of battery power and land...

its a good start

jamort · « **Reply #14 on:** August 05, 2009, 01:53:37 AM »

welll we have like 4 sponsors and have to sell the hell out of donut plus we have an activity fee thats 30$ for each kid that gets into the club which has always been 20 kids in the club so theres 600$ just for that

Joker94 · « **Reply #15 on:** August 05, 2009, 02:00:14 AM »

5k would be awsome

over all the project is totally possible.

jamort · « **Reply #16 on:** August 05, 2009, 02:46:53 AM »

yeah well you have to relize sometimes it takes a lot of contribution to get a lot of money....
4 sponsors gave us like 4000 last year and then 600 activity fees and 400 profit from donuts...
the reason were lacking money this year is becuase 3 of our sponsors went out of business

semismart · « **Reply #17 on:** August 05, 2009, 11:44:02 PM »

is your team frc and if so what number?

mdmedlin · « **Reply #18 on:** August 06, 2009, 01:46:49 AM »

Something to think of would be like to have magnets to guide the helicopter to the heli pad. I am thinking this because it would help line up the heli to some contactors. The contactors that you use could be the spring loaded contactors that mill.max sells. http://mill-max.com/sockets/dip_search_results.cfm?step=3&search_category=interconnect&search_type=Header&search_description=Spring-Loaded+Header&stepimage=5&search_description2=Initial+Height+of+.217&search_rows=Single+Row&x=40&y=10

So that when the heli lands, you can use some sort of simple battery charger to charge the batteries. I think that maybe you can use some sort of voltage detector that will tell the heli it needs to charge. I am sure that there are others on this site that can tell you what electronics you would need for that. I am not an electronics guru, so I am not going to recommend anything for that, just that I know I have seen other posts where people talk about having roobts seek out a charger when the bot thinks it's running low on juice. All in all, I don't think it would be that hard of a project to do.

jamort · « **Reply #19 on:** August 06, 2009, 02:37:54 AM »

ok... we've already got it reading the amount of juice left but now it just lands.... magentism is a good idea but im not exactly sure... iv thought about having the charger controlled by a laptop and have sort of blue tooth or something...

mdmedlin · « **Reply #20 on:** August 06, 2009, 02:54:30 AM »

when I was talking about the magnets, it was like using a N-N repullsion to get the heli into correct position. You could something to get it close to where it needs to go and as it lowers itself to the landing pad, if you had some magnets attached to the legs and the same pole magnets as it lowers, then the magnetic fields would repel the heli into like a box as it goes down. The question that I have is why do you need to have the charger controlled by a laptop or a blue tooth?

Joker94 · « **Reply #21 on:** August 06, 2009, 03:23:01 AM »

if you were to do that would you need to use electro magnets, the reason that i am thinking like that is when you go to land it may play aroud with the heli's balance and cause it to crash but i have not seen the set up so i don't know for shore

jamort · « **Reply #22 on:** August 06, 2009, 05:16:23 AM »

its not controlled by bluetooth... i think the magnet is a good idea...

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Author Topic: is this reasonable? (Read 3648 times)