The project achieves complete concept, design and development of a programmable path grid navigator robot. The project deals with the design and development of the mechanical, hardware, embedded software and the user interface (for path feeding) aspects of the robot. The developed robot is a fully functional wireless robot in which the path to be traced is programmed with the help of an interactive user interface in Matlab environment, and there after the robot can trace the path to the accuracy of 0.75 millimeter on a surface after being detached from the computer. The epitomizing features...

The previous version of this device used pulse width modulation (pwm) to control the power from the five solar panels to charge the battery bank. Under full sun conditions the MOSFETS got a bit warm and the whole unit radiated a lot of RFI. This design uses a set of relays - one for each panel. If the controller decides the battery voltage is too low, it engages another relay; if its too high, it drops one out. This tends to 'float' the voltage at about 14 volts as long as sufficient sunlight is available. The controller also implements a network style interface (open collector TTL,...

Eventually we all want to know just where our robot is, so we can choose an absolute direction. Usually this type of device is quite expensive. However to our rescue comes [url=http://dinsmoregroup.com/dico/]Dinsmore[/url] with low-cost electronic compass module. It outputs the four cardinal points and combinations thereof that will give eight directions. I decided that combining this with tilt sensors (the Dinsmore compass will only work if not tilted more than 12 degrees) would be a cool project. I am using a PIC 12C508 to do the dirty work and return an 8 bit number with the directional...

This project is inspired by the DPRG IRPROX project. They have a pretty good PCB layout and idea. I would like to thank them for posting their project for all of us to see and learn from, I wouldn't have started PIC programming without them, or at least not nearly as quickly come up to speed! The pinout on my board allows either a five-wire or a four-wire connection to be made the former uses a disable line if desired. You can also put in a resistor or use a trimpot to adjust range. The trimpot locations are very generic, most pots will fit. Be careful not to adjust pot to 0 ohms! The IR...

Sometimes you want a simple solution to a problem and you don't mind if your main controller has to do the work. This IRPD requires the main robot processor to choose which side to look at, and requires it to "debounce" the results for reliably operation. But, it still works really well without any complex program code. The NAND gate is a standard 74LS00 that you can get anywhere - even Radio Shack, same with the 555, IR detector (RS Everlight or Sharp GP1U58Y) and IR LEDs can also be gotten at Radio Shack. Parts are easy to find and simple to connect. This does not require any fancy...

We all have need of that last line of defense when the SONAR glitches, the IRPD doesn't and our bot is on a collision course with a table leg. That last defense against re-kitting is a bumper. I have made a few from microswitches, miniswitches and other things - usually they work, sometimes they need too much force to work and "ugh" collision. This example is another type of sensor that doesn't use a switch, its parts are super cheap and it works just great. Its a "whisker" bumper. Let me show you some pictures and describe what is going on, a picture is worth a thousand words in this kind...