TRUCKBOT

TRUCKBOT is my first venture into micro-controllers and electronics. The goal is to create an autonomous mobile vehicle that is aware of its surroundings, can avoid obstacles, and entertains/annoys my two cats.

Under the hood, so far:

Arduino Uno
1A motor driver IC
6v battery pack (will be replaced with NiMH)
Servo-mounted ultra-sonic range-finder

To Do:

Servo-mounted Laser
steering control
2D map creation
object avoidance
LED lights
Motion sensor

Thanks to the wonderful folks at #Arduino on Freenode for their help. Special thanks to 'AbstractBeliefs', who has slightly more patience than Gandhi.

Update #1

I've started the range-finder and servo code, first data samples look great. I was waving my hand in front of truckbot while the servo continually moved to 45, 90, 135, 90 and back to 45 degrees. Right now servo gets a 150ms delay between moves, but I'm going to see if i can lower this. Also, doing a transition from 0,1,2,3..45 with very short delays may be quieter than 45-delay-90-delay-180,etc.

Here's the data from the map array:

35, 35, 36,
171, 34, 36,
171, 33, 36,
27, 30, 36,
35, 34, 36,
206, 44, 36,
204, 43, 37,
206, 43, 36,
205, 43, 38,

And a video:

Update #2 -

Truckbot is alive. I've switched out the 6v battery pack with 2 9v's wired in parallel, this vastly improves truckbot's maneuvering speed and agility. The Arduino has been moved inside the chassis, and the range-finder now operates much faster, and takes roughly twice the readings as before.