Society of Robots - Robot Forum
Electronics => Electronics => Topic started by: airman00 on July 17, 2007, 06:21:24 PM
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Has anybody hacked an electric wheelchair before and can tell me how to mod it to be a robot base?
,Eric
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I have hacked one for a transport robot. I used the motors, wheels, amps, and seat to form the body and I hacked electronics from an RC car to make it wireless. To connect the wheels to the motor I cut the top part of the frame off and used 90 degree elbow brackets going from the frame to the seat. It was able to carry >200lb at fairly nice speeds as wheel chair motors are pretty beefy.
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How did you make the robot turn? Did you have one wheel go forward and one wheel go backward?
Was the robot able to navigate a house?
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It used a differential drive method, so it would either turn each side at different speeds or turn each side in different directions. It was not able to navigate around the house, it was purely remote control.
I attached a wireless camera to it so in theory I could sit in one place and drive it around. In practice the field of view of the camera was not large enough to allow me to tele operate and I would just bump into everything.
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I just did.
Some (I think most) electric wheelchairs have a built in brake that is controlled by the computer in the controller that does not release unless there is power detected to the motors. I had to remove the built in brake on each motor to get them to work. It was really easy, simply remove the end of the motor housing and remove the braking mechanism. Other than that its a snap and you can use your favorite controllers for the motors. There is a pretty good book that uses hacked wheelchairs for a radio controlled bot. Heres the link.
http://www.amazon.com/Build-Your-Own-All-Terrain-Robot/dp/007143741X