Robot vacuum cleaner, thoughts?

So I've build the tutorial robot and me and a friend want to do something more challenging. We've decided to re-use the parts of the tutorial robot and make a similar robot, this time with a vacuum cleaning goal. It's not the goal to make one for personal use or even a good working one, it's for a school project so if it moves around and vacuum cleans a little bit it's good enough.

Raw sketch of the body, wheels and sensors (Sensors are red, wheels black, body is large rectangle): 

Robot_design_1.png

Obviously not to scale, some things are larger than in real, some things smaller, some things further apart, closer etcetera. I'll build the body so it can house all the neccesary things from actuators to microcontroller. Designed by looking up stuff on the internet.

Robot_design_2.png

It is quite simple: The brush sweeps up dust unto the dustpan and on the other end is a vacuum sucker (I have no idea what the English word is) which sucks in the dust that gets sweeped up, this is simple in design that helps get the job done with a smaller sucker thing. Once again, designed by looking at other stuff on the internet.

I would like to know what you guys think I should add/remove or do different. I also was thinking about the power. It's going to need more power than the tutorial robot, obviously. So how do I add more power? I can't simply add more batteries to the microcontroller/project board as it is designed for 4,5 volts and stuff like the sucker is going to need a lot more. How do you do this?

I’ll consider it, see what

I’ll consider it, see what my informatics teacher thinks about it. The biggest problem would be that it’s for a school project and we might not be allowed to do something that’s largely pre-build.

**One suggestion I have is, **

make the body round, but, keep the wheels near the center. The reasoning is such that when a square robot drives along a wall into a corner it will become rather stuck. If a round base drives into a corner, it can rotate on its axis to change direction.

Right

I did think about it as I saw every other one with a round shape, only now realised it’s indeed because of corners. Thanks.

Circut Help

If you could put together a diagram or drawing of how you have stuff wired in your circut some other members or I could give you a little insight on your current needs you were talking about in the shout box. 

Happy building, Nathan

Just saw this old document and thought of your quest…

http://robotica.udl.cat/pub/articles/building_a_mobile_robot_for_a_floor-cleaning_operation_in_domestic_environments.pdf

 

Right-o

Completely forgot about this. Oops.

The idea isn’t dead, only delayed. My informatics teacher had something different for me, so I’ll most likely continue with this in the summer. Sorry XD

I’ve always fancied Dyson.

Just saying…

Where can I get it?