A robot as my next project? Question on navigation...

Chris_D

Hi folks,

I have recently turned into a propeller head although I still love my atmegas!· I have been working on a CNC controller for about a year now and probably have another 1/2 year to go before I might consider it done.· After that, I am probably going to dive into a robot project of some sort. Being fortunate to have access to machining equipment etc., I am not·interested in a kit or similar type robot, rather a full DIY thing.·

At the moment, I am thinking of a bot that can wander the house.· The first question I have is how would you go about navigating inside a house?· I can easily understand how some basic sensors could keep it off the walls and other obstacles.· What are the various ways of having it go from room 'A' to room 'B' etc?

Second question pertains to·motivation. Our house has stairs, plenty of them.· Has anyone had success with a·certain type of locomotion system (tracks, wheels, legs) that worked out good for dealing with stairs?

Chris
·

Mike Green

1) A good way to handle rooms is to have an IR beacon that shines on the ceiling of each room. This could easily be done with a Stamp or little Atmega chip that simply sends a continuous serial datastream on a 38KHz IR carrier. This would simply identify each room with a unique code that the Bot could use to look up the room's characteristics in a table, even a rough map of the locations of obstacles and doorways.

2) There have been a variety of stair climbing robots and wheelchairs described (and built) over the years. Do some websearches. You'll probably find videos of demonstrations.

iDave

Here is a mighty fine site that goes in detail about stair climbing robots.

www.stairbot.de/en_beschreib.htm

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"A complex design is the sign of an inferior designer."

Chris_D

Thanks for the info guys.· This all looks very challenging which to me = hours of fun!

I can see there is enough information out there on the net that research will be extensive before I dive in.·



Chris

lardom

Your cnc is fabulous. I'm surprised that you would add another 1/2 year to it.

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