Sunny the Solar Bot

Let's Make Robots Robots
1

This robot try to follow the sun. The tracks come from a old RC toy, the power is provide by a dual H bridge (L298) 

An arduino process informations from sensors and command motors.

A solar panel is set on 2 servomotor to be rotated in all directions

Thanks to all that the robot is able to follow the sun

The solar panel is omnidirectional, a tube was added to collect only the beams coming from the front. To find the brightest spot around him, the robot starts by scanning the environment with predefined positions, then it target to the brightest spot previously found and try again.

To find a brighter spot from its current position, the solar panel follow a curve type hypotrochoid, kind a clover. The interest of such a curve is to cover a surface smoothly. If the current spot is not the brightest, it focuses on the new and repeat this procedure. At each cycle, the robot sends an impulse to the engines to get in line. If it is in the axis, it forwards.

follow the sun

  • Actuators / output devices: 2 servos and 2 motor
  • Control method: autonomous
  • CPU: Arduino Duemilanove
  • Operating system: Arduino
  • Power source: 7.2V NiMH from 6 penlites (2 x 3)
  • Programming language: Arduino C
  • Sensors / input devices: Solar panel dark detector
  • Target environment: indorr and outdoor
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://community.robotshop.com/robots/show/sunny-the-solar-bot
2

What a fun robot to watch!

What a fun robot to watch! The ultimate ‘light follower’.
Add a lightsaber sound to it and you’ll make Fritsl’s day :slight_smile:

3

Nice moves

Nice moves. Me likes.

And those tread cogs are the coolest :slight_smile:

 

4

Excellent video

For  moment I thought you had it on fast forward. I would love to see the algorithm or the clover pattern.

5

Source

I just add source, I’m sorry, it’s not very clean.

6

found it

Thanks, I found the section describing the curves. Very elegant.

7

That’s a cool little

That’s a cool little bot.

What happens when it rolls into a long shadow? Does it go back to its last light position?

 

8

the robot searching the

the robot searching the brightest spot, when it rolls into a shadow, it only continues to follow the less dark spot. But I’m currently rewritting the program and I could introduce your idea.

9

Yes!

Yes!

10

Cool :slight_smile: I did one very

Cool :slight_smile:

 

I did one very similar : https://www.robotshop.com/letsmakerobots/node/35071

Though my light sensing servo motion wasnt nearly as sophisticated as yours!

Pretty satisfying to give a robot a “head” that it actually uses!