Autonomous Mobile Robots

Well, I received a nice message yesterday at facebook with a question what does my mobile robot consist of?

So below you would find the full information about it:

Lets start:

• Mobile platform - caterpillar mobile platform, very stable and easy to control
• Main Controller - Arduino board Deciemila, nice and easy to program and use. I think to install one more for strategic level control, probably one more would be used for some tactical control. Allover 3 controllers are planed to be used, for the moment only one is used.
• Motor Controller- Type SaberTooth, for 12V DC motor control -  the RF version.
• Communication between computer and mobile robot is made on the basis of Xbee shield for Arduino
• 9 V NiMh battery -  will be changed to 12 or 14V one because more power is necessary.
• HMC - magnetic compass with I2C protocol.
• Two Hall sensors for velocity measurement, and two magnets for each caterpillar (get the linear velocity)… more magnets needed, and by using magnets it is necessary to recalibrate the compass.
• Camera tower with two cameras, one wireless for operator, one for internal robots use… , IR distance measurer with I2C interface.

So these are all components at the moment.

Now the problem how to make them work together Please check the updates regularly, later I will publish algorithms for motion control of the robot by velocity(speed) and trajectory.