TRUCKBOT

Intro: 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. 

Obviously, the object avoidance and navigation code needs some work.  Back to work! 

Comments

[dremeldude]

to avoid obstacles, you could use a bump sensor to avoid obstacles below the rangefinder