Gallery
 | My first autonamous robot. This fellow uses a Basic-24 chip on a BasicAtom board for a brain, on a Lynxmotion Hexapod kit. It navigates around using a two IR-LED sensor system, but so far it just wanders my house with no other use. Unfortunately the original kit hardware has some faults which makes its movements unreliable, and I haven't had time to repair it properly. |
This one isn't my design, but was built from a BEAM kit and then modified. Instead of using a fully programmed microcontroller, it is a simple phototropic circuit that directs the creature towards or away from light sources. It also has very simple piano wire touch sensors to prevent collisions. |  |
 | This little fellow is a more recent creation of mine, which has been dubbed Herbie by others who have met him. Originally I built him around a BasicAtom board on a Rogue Robotics ATR base, but lately I have upgraded him to use an Arduino board which is a little more powerful. His 'eyes' are actually an Ultrasonic distance sensor capable of determining the distance to objects. This is mounted on a two servo system that provides him with the ability to turn his head almost 90 degrees to either side and up and down. He is currently programmed to drive around my house examining walls and doorways all around him, and I have added some preliminary mapping functions so he can calculate and remember the best routes to take. |
My latest creation. This one uses a kit built Lynxmotion Tri-track base running off of an independent NiCad battery for the base, with motors controlled by a kit built H-bridge board with an L298 IC. The original brain I installed was a Polulu Orangutan (shown in the photo), but I have since added a more versatile Arduino Deicimila board and I am converting the Orangutan board to run subprocesses such as sensor reading or mapping. The sensors on this robot include two IR-LED collision sensors, a light level sensor, and I am working on adding a sound sensor. I am also working on building a proper chassis for this unit, with proper mountings for the sensors and boards (as opposed to lying loose on the upper platform) On the programming side, I have taught it to navigate buildings and some minimal mapping and route planning functions. Next I am either going to add a neural network so that it can begin to learn to use its sensors on its own, or train it to follow a moving object using a modified webcam. |  |
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