Autonomous RC Car

Masterchafed

I am looking into a conversion of my rc car to fully autonomous, but have no idea where to start. I heard the Basic Stamp microcontroller was a good choice, but still have no idea how to hook any of it up. Any help would be appriciated, my car is a two engine driven car, thats 1 engine in back, and a servo motor in front. Any help, like i said, would have my full gratitude.

Franklin

Start with the pdf file 'what is a microcontroller' and progress to the boe-bot stuff for hints.

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- Stephen

Masterchafed

Thankyou, I will post results if I get any. I was also thinking of using laser guidance (i.e. the laser maps out the room with the laser and stores it on an internal computer, allowing for very accurate navigation, but this would require a much higher end setup, that being an embedded computer.) would be awesome though. Thanks again.

Masterchafed

Where can I find this document?

Franklin

www.parallax.com/html_pages/downloads/siccurriculum/documentation_sic_curriculum.asp

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- Stephen

bgthree

Unless you have prior experience with microcontrollers, you really should just buy either the Discovery kit and/or the BOE Bot kit if you want to do a project like this. Making an autonomous RC car wouldn't be too hard, but I think you'll be happy with learning the basics with the Boe Bot. I just started out but found these kits to be great teachers. No, I am not a Parallax plant I just really like their educational products

Masterchafed

Well, that would be a good idea, but i just don't have enough money, i am going to be getting a kit though, this car is going to be awesome. I planned on adding sonar for collision detection at first, then more stuff later. Thanks for the ideas though.

Kevin Wood

Take a look at a book called Robot Builder's Bonanza by Mike Predko. It shows how to build robots from scratch, and uses the Basic Stamp 2 for a lot of the examples.

stev0tron

For fun you could always set some things up that are completely reactionary, then try to think of ways that you could implement logic as you go along and learn more about the microcontroller.

Masterchafed

Thanks for the ideas, I did plan on adding logic as i went. I was hoping that by the end of this project, my little car will be able to swerve past obstacles smoothly and at high speeds, and I am hoping that he will be friendly, as in, he will greet you with friendly phrases when he sees you, i might even have him follow me around. who knows. I have high hopes for this project, and have no doubt it will turn out great.