Add Obstacle Detecting Whiskers to Your Robot

After a particularly tasty cheese sandwich I found myself thinking of mice. More precisely how to make my robot more mouse like. The answer, whiskers. So here is an Instructable on how to add the simplest of sensors to your robot, to get it detecting obstacles in its path and making decisions based on what it encounters. Well let's get started.

While this Instructable uses some extra acrylic pieces and special wire this is an upgrade that could easily be accomplished using several paper clips and a little ingenuity.

A quick video of my Arduino Controlled Servo Robot - (SERB) bumping its way around.

(Shameless Plug)
To check out more delightfully fun open source projects please visit oomlout.com

Step 1: Parts & Tools

The items we need to collect before getting started:

Robot - (Arduino Controlled Servo Robot - (SERB) )
( build your own , or purchase a lovely kit ($175)

• We use an Arduino Controlled Servo Robot - (SERB) however any Arduino powered dual servo robot will work. Other options (here)

Acrylic - (several options)

• Cut Your Own (Scroll Saw) -- Download the scroll saw pattern (02-WHIS-Scrollsaw Pattern.pdf) glue it to a piece of 3mm Acrylic, cut and drill
• Cut Your Own (Laser Cutter) -- Download (00-WHIS-Whisker Holders.eps) and cut it on your laser cutter using 3mm acrylic
• Purchase A Whisker Kit -- Available from oomlout.com (here)

Hardware - (all available from Home Depot)

• 3mm x 15mm bolt (x3)
• 3mm x 10mm bolt (x4)
• 3mm nut (x7)
• 3mm washer (x1)
• Whisker Wire (14 Gauge) (120 cm)
• Wire (22 AWG solid)

Comments

[davecsantos]

Awesome idea! I have a problem on the last step, bummer. When I try to verify the code in the Arduino code builder it gives me an error saying something is wrong with this line

beginSerial (9600); //Starts the serial port

Any idea what's wrong? Thanks again.

[lowercase]

Cool but I think that's way too stiff to make whiskers it's even pushing the obstacles when it bumps into them. I'd use guitar string or something more sensitive and whisker-like.

[stale56]

k3wlio