Meet Rover, fresh out of Rogue Labs
Meet Rover, an autonomous roving robot-ish thing. ( Pictures below )
Rover was borne yesterday in the Rogue Labs, and it took its first breath to much whirring of motors and blinking of lights. Rover is the result of many weeks of experimenting with a few PIC microcontrollers which a friend very very kindly lent me. [ Full Story ]
Basically, Rover is a mobile base unit I’m using as a platform for exploring autonomy in robotic systems. The motor control circuit and logic circuit are modular, meaning I can easily swap them out for components I’ll build later.
Rover’s “brain” is a PIC16F84A which controls the drive circuit on Ports A and monitors various inputs on Port B to determine what it should do when it detects something.
The drive circuit is an L298N 2-motor controller and a 7805 5v logic power supply/regulator for both the motor controller and the PIC.
Right now Rover has bumpers that detect a soft collision with an obstacle and then reverses while turning. So it basically runs around a room in a straight line until it hits something, then reverses while turning for a few seconds, then continues in another direction until it hits something else. Pretty cool to watch.
I’ll post videos later when I get a better quality camera.
I’ve have waited many many years to do this. [ Full Story ]
Over the next few days/weeks/months, I’ll be experimenting with non-tactile sensors like Sonar, IR and more outputs.
Also, since I’ve pretty much gotten the basics of Assembler and PICs, I’ll be moving on to more powerful microcontrollers and playing around with some advanced stuff.
Here are some pictures for you.
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Rogue FM: Steve Jablonsky – Arrival to Earth (Transformers Soundtrack)
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Memoirs: Thank you, Gonza! Thank you, Abba!
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Offtopic:
Both the man of science and the man of action live always at the edge of mystery, surrounded by it.
- J. Robert Oppenheimer
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