Lynxmotion 4WD base with add-ons and 2x PIC32MX

Created Tue, 26 Jul 2011 00:10:13 +0000 by electroscott

electroscott

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 00:10:13 +0000

Here's my robot base. It's a Lynxmotion 4WD base with gripper mechanism. Some of the features so far are:

4x 7.2V gear motors (3A rating) with QEI for each motor 9.6V LiFePO4 20Ah battery pack (3x 3.2V with balance connector) 2x SerializerWL (leveraging the H-bridges but nothing else) 2x PIC32MX: one from ChipKit Mega32 and one from Microchip development kit 4x Rainbowduino 8x8 RGB displays with custom AVR firmware for backpacks 3 channel accelerometer on robot body (+/- 1.5g, 10-bits) CH Robotics CHR-6D IMU on gripper arm Spektrum AR8000 8-channel aircraft radio Spektrum T1000 telemetry unit Spektrum DX8 radio

Main board houses radio controller, 4x 25 kHz motor PWM, 4x quadrature encoder interface, 4x PID controller for motors, speaker, and SPI master interface.

Slave board (ChipKit) houses IMU communication, servo controller, robot body accelerometer, Rainbowduino master controller and slave SPI interface.

Next on the agenda is to dust the beast off, then implement autonomous motion along with radio control. Robot used to include Bluetooth but that is getting replaced by Xbee. Roborealm software and a monitoring camera will look at Rainbowduino displays for color changes and fiducial markers to incorporate optical telemetry of operating conditions. Gripper mechanism is controlled like a "ball on plate" and self balances with IMU module input in order to correct for robot body going over uneven terrain. Will add GPS and other sensors for distance/collision avoidance so that the unit will self-navigate to various waypoints.

--Scott

KM6VV

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 20:06:54 +0000

Sweet!

Maybe say a little more about the IMU and the rainbow stuff?

Also curious about the "ball on a plate".

Alan KM6VV