My Robot-Project
Malcolm
Posts: 15
Hello all, I am not a big contributor to the forum, but I enjoy it daily with my morning coffee. This a great place to learn how people use the Propeller. My last post was a figure 8 entry back in 2017. Since then I have made some advances in my retirement, build a “Robot Project” that I wish to share with the community.
It was my attempt with the following 3 videos to describe and present early results of my robot.
In this 1st video, you can see my drone-vehicles in action as directed through my robot’s lowest interface layer.
The 2nd video is slide presentation of the overall structure and functionality of my robot. Lots of details presented.
This 3rd video shows drone-vehicles in action as driven by my robot’s middle layer.
All 3 vids have been set up at my YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwCoFv4pq9-2b9zljKEt6TQ
I would ask all who think this project is worth sharing to do so with friends, colleagues, and other forums you frequent, for this is the only forum I visit, but I wish to share my robot-project with other like-minds.
Enjoy & Thanks
Malcolm
Comments
Malcolm, thank you for sharing! What a great project. I really like the software interfaces for controlling your robots! I was wondering why do you require the PID control? I have not built a robot myself but I have use PID control in the power industry for controlling a process to a setpoint. Why would you need it for moving your robot? Which robot is the closest to performing one of your chores ha? hopefully stacking the wood!
Thanks for your comment. The design of the drone interface has evolved over my project’s development. Usability is the key.
My Auto-pilot uses a PID controller to control wheel-motor speed. Currently, drones operate on a frame-rate of 100Hz. In each frame, a theoretical ‘position and orientation’ is calculated and fused-sensor readings are used to produce an actual ‘position and orientation’. The PID controller tracks the delta between theoretical and actual and provides updated motor speeds in order to correct any detected travel deviations. Using this method, the drone is able to detect: Drop, Picked-up, roll-over, wheel-spin and vehicle-slide conditions.
Next spring I intend to use “Crawler” with the ‘detection-unit’ to try to map outdoors. This winter I hope to build an “Arm” on a drone over. It will be a few years before I get help on the Homestead.
OK I see. You use the PID controller to control speed. Very interesting.
It will be good help when it is done. Keep us updated. Thanks.