Help on lunar capability rover

Let's Make Robots Robots
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this is a page to help me make a lunar capibitly robot. Please tell me in comments or email me at : [email protected] on how to do the programing and building the rover please do i will continuely update this with more info because i need as much help a i can at this point in time currently on this project. Im working with the wheels or treeds i need to decide and im also working on inrtument and equipment compartment .

Update 1 : Me and my team have decied on the height will be 15 cm . Also just to let every one know its gonna be solar powerd by 2 15 volt solar panels.

update 2 : 10/7/2015 My team have decied on wheels for are rover.

public vote

1. first choice 4 wheel chassis.

2. 2nd choice is 6 wheel chassis.

 

please comment vote in comments

 

This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://community.robotshop.com/robots/show/help-on-lunar-capability-rover
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Disadvantages

http://www.intorobotics.com/wheels-vs-continuous-tracks-advantages-disadvantages/

Continuing on that theme of disadvantages, poor grammar and desiring to be emailed won’t help you in your quest. Latitude is given to non native english speakers but I suspect this is your native language. So, step it up, if you can.

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Wheels

Jayden Squire do not be discouraged by the idiot police—every group has one!  I favor wheels for remote surface operations as track vehicles with its many moving parts are quick to break down.   I encourage your team to work through the challenges of building your lunar rover.  Happy building and good luck with your project!

 

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thanks

thanks machina i think i wheels fo go with the wills but i have a couple day to when my team has a meeting.

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thanks

thanks machina i think i wheels fo go with the wills but i have a couple day to when my team has a meeting

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Who do you want to play with?

In every  technical group there are there are those that know, and those that sort of know.

If you want to play with those that really know,  then you put your best game forward, otherwise they will ignore you. That includes doing your homework and doing your best to be readable. Those that really know tend to abhor percieved laziness.

Now, it matters little to me what you actually do. If I hurt your feelings, I am sorry. But those are the ground rules for getting in the real game. Do as you wish.

 

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4 wheels. Easier to build,

4 wheels. Easier to build, then if it’s not enough the next will have 6 wheels.

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Have you choosed a frame (i

Have you choosen a frame (i see a RC crawler in the picture) ?

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update

i thnk that to so thats what i will do at this stage

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no

no i havent i think im going to go iwth a old rc one

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no

no i havent i think im going to go iwth a old rc one

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ok

ok i under stand 

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A little background

As you progress, you might want to ask questions in other groups/forums. In general, the more technical the group, the better you have to be to get the help you want.

This is a fairly tolerant group for newbies. Stackoverflow programming groups are much tougher. C newsgroups are notoriously tough. But even the forums over at Arduino, which aren’t particularly technical have their exasperation limits.

Take a look at this thread to see what I mean:

http://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=346763.0

Good luck with your robot.

 

 

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Yes, this is a good place to

Yes, this is a good place to start. There are many around for low cost, you can check the classified HERE.

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re: Lunar Rover

It would be useful to post a lot more detail about everything if you want to get any kind of help, especially useful help.  Otherwise, we are all guessing or just don’t bother.  Cyberjeff posted wise and helpful advice.  I was one of the people that ignored your post intially waiting for a lot more data to get filled in.

About all I have to go on so far is you said “Lunar Rover” - which means we are talking about driving on the moon.  The first thing you have to decide is how seriously you want to take the term Lunar, as Lunar is an entirely different kind of challenge than building something for your backyard.  If Lunar is a joke, then things get a lot easier.

As for hardware, without having any more information to go on, I would advise that you think really hard about what sensors and actuators you need to carry, work from that to determine what processors, power systems, and other boards you will need to carry, and then work from that to determine what kind of rover platform you will need.  I would think you don’t want anything with inflatable tires in a vaccum…I’d try some kind of solid plastic.

Example:  A lunar rover (even a pretend one) might need some way to communicate directly back to earth (with a pointing dish), or with a base station that has a dish.  The size and weight of whatever gear you need might be the biggest factor in your choice of platform.

Power:  I suspect you meant 15Watts instead of 15Volts.  How large are the panels?  What will a panel like that generate on the moon?  A lot more I think.  Will the robot charge and then “wake up” and move for 10 minutes until it runs out of power again?  A given spot on the moon (on average) is going to have 2 weeks of sunlight followed by 2 weeks of darkness.  Can your batteries hold up for 2 weeks of darkness?

You said you wanted help on programming.  Will the rover be remote controlled, semi-autonomous, autonomous?   It would also help if we knew your experience level.  How much programming experience do you have (in years)?  …in what languages and on what platforms?   I have been programming for 32 years and so have many different experiences that could be relevant.  Any advice I would give you will depend on your answers to all these questions and your experience level.  I’m not going to suggest that someone just getting started in programming start using OOP, DBs, or ideas from “Design Patterns” by the Gang of 4 right out of the gate.

I wish you good luck on your project,

Martin

P.S.  In the late 1960’s, my dad wrote code for the Apollo Program…which actually went to the Moon several times.  …Not bad for a guy that grew up dirt poor on a farm in the deep south of the United States.

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Huntsville

A round of appreciation for your dad.

I dated a girl whose father worked for NASA in Huntsville. Just down the street was Von Braun’s rather ordinary suburban house. She took me through the rocket test sites where she used to take her HS squeezes for the extracuricular activity. Her brother was trying to fly one of the missions.

I’m waiting to see the ops rocket!

  Fascinating and great fun!

 

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MAJOR RETARD OVER HERE—MAJOR!

Fahcrissakes, man, you’re lecturing a little kid on posting etiquette?   What—you think somebody from MIT is going to post a trivial LUNAR rover design question on LMR?

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re: Machina

LMR has always encouraged people to post more and to fill in details, so much so that it provides spaces to fill in these things in. 

I think a little background is in order.  Jayden was asking for help.  All this started because Jayden posted on one of my robots and asked me to email him directly with some help.  I recommended he make a robot post so everyone could help him, and he did so.  I was asked directly and so felt an obligation to try to help in some way, because I promised him I would.  The first step to getting help on LMR is to make an attempt to post well.  I hope all the kids on the site learn that early on.  I believe I was helping and I believe I kept it professional.  I certainly didn’t mistake anyone for being from MIT.  If I was on the other end, I would have been perfectly capable of carrying on this dialog from about age 11, which was when my school started teaching programming to everyone and basics about moons and planets.  If I was asking for help, I would have appreciated the information and feedback.  I would not appreciate 3rd parties stepping in and getting in the way of useful dialog by throwing personal insults.  If this is a school project, incorporating a little useful information about the moon into a presentation might be the difference between getting an A or a C.

I don’t consider it retarded to attempt to post useful and relevant information.  Would it be less retarded for me to dumb down my post even more?  I think I dumbed it down to grade-school level already, unless the schools have really gone backward since I was there.  Thanks for the personal attack.  Next time Jayden asks me for help, shall I ignore it or run it by you first before responding?  That is a rhetorical question.  Looking back, I might be one of the only people so far that paid attention to the challenge and heeded the call for help and posted anything particularly relevant about the actual task…making a rover to drive on the moon.

Martin

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Indeed i often saw on LMR

Indeed i often saw on LMR posts made by master engineers in mechatronics, asking for advice which could be obvious for an hobbist, but counter intuitive for graduate, like where to place batteries, make wheels, or just add personality. Last week i visited the top mechatronics lab in engineering university, and they were upset because the rover didn’t perform at the same speed of the simulations. It had steel wheels on a smooth plastic floor, adding rubber tires solved the problem. The battery was also placed in a not simmetric way and the rover was steering even if it was using a PID regulation.

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Actually

Actually that was me, don’t you remember insulting me?

I saw that post languishing, as I have seen many similar. So, I gave him a link and some advice on how to get a better result from his post.

As far as Jayden’s age, no one knows, all we know is that he is two years older than when he joined.

So, we took him a little more serious than he deserved, is that your point? Lighten up,and for heaven’s sake don’t call people retards in all caps, we can disagree and still be civil.