Pete's Robo-Page
Here are some of the Robots I've built, and what I learned from each of them. All of this stuff I learned from someone else publishing info on the Web, and so I'll do the same, so others can learn what I've learned from others. Standing on shoulders and all that.
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The truck is controlled via std RC radio, until the user hits the "Landing Gear Up" switch, which turns on the Auto-pilot navigation in the truck. The system reads GPS, calc's distance and bearing to the next way point, and uses a compass to steer itself towards the next way point. When it gets close enough (within 10 feet) it switches to the next way point in the list, and navigates towards it. Once it reaches the last point, it loops back to the first (and drives a continuous loop)
The truck uses standard R/C radio, Speed Controller and steering servo. I found the truck at Goodwill, tore out the electronics but kept the drive motor. Nav system uses a compass and GPS receiver. CPU is a PIC16F877A on a LAB-X1 board with a uM FPU chip tied on for PicBASIC Pro with Floating Point power.
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Kalman filters are used a lot in Nav and IMU systems, and I want to learn about them. When I saw this article about them in Nuts & Bolts magazine, I wanted to implement it. So I built this balancing bot using 1/8" birch, some continuous rotation servos, and just screwed my development boards right to the birch frame. Took about 1 hour to build the frame, and 3 hrs to write the code and wire the parts. Works Great.
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Speed controls cost a lot. I'm cheap and like to build things, so using the web, I learned how to build my own.
Here's how to control the speed of things, and how to measure how fast, or how far, you've gone.
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