My Big-Base Robot

[MaltiK]

I have posted many ideas for robots, but this will be my second on this website.

 

It is a Butler Robot. It will have a 12v Mini Fridge onboard, with a springed DC Solenoid wired to a Max232 chip, to the USB of a local laptop. An onboard wireless camera will be linked to its radio receiver connected to a TV Tuner (RCA inputs) to the USB of a computer. The computer will be running image/video processing software to detect and follow distinct blobs of color, shape, etc.

 

The final designs with some calculations for finding the inertia of the entire robot. Really to figure out the stress placed on the wood.

(I went with 3/4" plywood) Eventually I will paint it white.

 

Plan rendered in Google Sketchup, obviously not drawn to scale

 

The two 12v 24AH batteries

 

Closer look

 

Sabertooth 2x25 Motor driver, very strong and reccommended by me! Capable of 25A load per channel, and 50A fully

 

The robot head next to my 1st place baseball trophy

When I received the head from this toy:

I gutted it. Of course it didnt look as nice as the model picture. I took out the leds inside as they were not bright enough, and added my own red ones for the eyes and blue leds for the headlights above (where the red and blue panels are, I took them off)

 

The hefty motors

~from a Jazzy 1100 Wheelchair

 

 

 

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Edit #1:

 

L brackets

 

Caster not screwed in, because I need to first see if the wheelchair motors will have clearence, and everything would be flat. Yes I know thats alot of brackets, extra sturdiness! :)

 

 

 

Vertical slab thingy, I needed four of these guys

 

 

 

 

I do not thinki it is going to hold at all

 

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Future alterations:

• Use XBee Modules... to make it go wireless
• Upgrade Batteries to 72AH

Follows things with certain colors, shapes, etc.

• Actuators / output devices: 2 24v Wheelchair Motors, 1 12v springed DC solenoid
• Control method: Autonomous or Xbox 360 Controller
• CPU: Laptop
• Operating system: Windows 2000/XP/Vista
• Power source: 2 12v 24AH SLA Batteries in series, and 1 10v Ni-Ca
• Programming language: C#
• Sensors / input devices: 1.2 GHz Wireless Camera (illegal I think)
• Target environment: Indoor or outdoor

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This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://community.robotshop.com/robots/show/my-big-base-robot

[ezekiel181]

Good plan. But your video

Good plan. But your video says its only for friends and you need an invite. You may have set it as a private video.</p><p>If youre going to go to the trouble of using sketchup for modelling the robot I would take the time to make it as much to scale as possible. It will help in the long run. If you really dont care about making it scale or youre just super-arty then stick with the hand drawn ones.

Is the webcam feeding to the onboard laptop for image processing or to a desktop?

Also what is the solenoid going to do?

[mrm]

Nice
Cant wait to see the finished product!

[lolgeek]

man I got jipped on the video…
Now I want an old automatic wheel chair so I can make cool things… lol

[MaltiK]

I am thinking about using an

I am thinking about using an old cheapo windows NT laptop that belongs to my dad, however that may either need to be overclocked, or is not fast enough period. So if that is the case, I will have to use my desktop and make it wireless or get another cheapo laptop

The solenoid is going to be controllable via laptop’s USB port and it will be behind the fridge, and that will be the only way to open it, is to open it via laptop, otherwise it is locked.

[christhecarpenter]

reset the video
You have your video set to private. Go public, yo!

[MaltiK]

oops sorry… better?
oops sorry… better?

[christhecarpenter]

Geeze-lou-eeze
Holy Christ, those wheel assemblies are perfect. Add some encoders and I’ll bet you have 1 degree turn precision at any speed.

[christhecarpenter]

One more…
Did I read 72AH? Isn’t that a car battery? --When you do, I would like to talk to you about taking the 24AH batts off your hands.

[MaltiK]

A typical (newer) car

A typical (newer) car batteries have 40AH. Older ones go lower from there I believe because they are just to kick start the solenoids.

And the 72AH upgrade won’t be for a loonng time, it is just a room for improvement. And I would never think about shipping something with a combined weight of 40 lbs… just too much of a nueisance.

[christhecarpenter]

Uff-da…
I don’t want to crap on any parades here, but those motor mounts look a little iffy… Got a friend with a welder? At any rate, I would say, when in doubt, run a diagonal. If you can get some sorta diagonal gusset above those motors I think you would be sitting a little prettier. --I’m just thinking about 60lbs (30 kilos) of batts sitting on those babies. You DO have to get this going, though… It would be a terrible shame to have those sweet motors and not have a kick-ass robot sitting on top of them!

[christhecarpenter]

Build this.

I hope this is understandable. Basically, you are removing the 4 allen key bolts at the top of the motor unit and replacing them with the same but much longer. In the little devider boxes at the hardware store (where all the specialty screws are) you can find little steel tube spacers. Find some that fit over the allen key bolts. This will allow a space above the motor units so all the stuff sticking up will clear the little shelf you are going to build above. The shelf is just 3 pieces of pine, 2 triangles and a “shelf”. Pre-drill and zip these together with wood glue and drywall screws 1 5/8" or 2" (PREDRILL!!). You might even want to add a washer on top of the tube spaces so they don’t crush themselves into the soft pine.

This should do it --Super simple with no special tools. Also, You have to get some triangle corners on the main box!!! As weight is applied to the motors, the top edges are going to get smashed together!

 

 

 

[christhecarpenter]

Just noticed…
You may have to remove or notch around that 90 degree pin thing sticking up out of the top of the motors…

[robologist]

The 90 degree pin is a gear
The 90 degree pin is a gear release, twisted one way, the gears engage the motor, twisted another way, the wheels are loose so you can push the robot (wheelchair) when the battery or whatever else fails.

[MaltiK]

so you suggest that i stay
so you suggest that i stay with completely wood? I think I want to make a rectangular base with the motors, and caster out of the metal I was talking about though, do you know where i can get this?

[christhecarpenter]

metal…
You can get angle-iron from the hardware store. 1"x1"x1/8" thick will work. You can cut it with a hack saw, drill with regular bits and use bolts to bolt it to the frame. In terms of wood --nothing wrong with it. Your cabinets are wood and hold a hundred pounds of dishes!

[MaltiK]

Wait, I dont get some of it,
Wait, I dont get some of it, on the top picture you have mounting holes for the motors above the motor, not to the side, this is not where the holes are. And if I replace the rods with allens, then it would not go through both of the holes.

[rik]

Chris does not mean to replace the rods

He wants you to replace the allen bolts with longer allen bolts. The bottom picture is side view. The top picture is a frontal view.

I’ll let Chris do the full explain with more drawing and bells on.

[icon]

impressive, why is the
impressive, why is the camera illegal/ where can i get one

[christhecarpenter]

I gotta know about this color tracking stuff.

Ok, this seems too good to be true…

Using your “track a color” software, could the laptop then send out (very) simple serial data based on your X/Y numbers? Now, I have to admit that I am a picaxe guy, not a real programmer/coder/ computer guy, but it seems that if your tracking software could simply spit out (2) variables, X and Y, it would be a piece of cake to have the picaxe control the motors to keep that object “in frame” and thus be driving to it.

This seems to simple to be true. I NEED as much information as you can give me on this one… Hell, I simply can not believe we couldn’t come up with a “you code something that will talk to a picaxe” for me and I “weld a proper chassis” for you!

MORE INFO, MORE INFO, MORE INFO!!!