Friday, June 29, 2007

Robot Butler Details

OK ,so my robot butler is right now just a wooden base with two casters in front and two independently motorized bicycle wheels. The motors are controlled by four relays in combinations. Wheel 1 direction and wheel 2 direction. For turning one wheel goes forward and the other wheel goes backwards.
As for sensors, I put IR sensors on the robot for detectors but it was not precise enough. I will purchase Matbotix EZ1 Sonar modules and use those for obstacle avoidance.
Oh yeah, I use a PIC16F627 as the brains of the system. I will put on my wireless video camera and a reciever so I can see video and control the robot over the internet.
The purpose of this robot will be as a butler robot to bring me drinks by voice command, R/C rover, and security robot.
Please comment or email me if you have any extra ideas or tips.

UPDATE : (6/24/08) I'm now extenisvely documenting my new butler robot!!!! The new one can pour drinks , talk, tell time, sweep, and sooo much more. I also give detailed instructions on how you can build your own butler robot!!! All the details can be found on my main page : eRobots.BlogSpot.com and also on the links on the right side of this page. Enjoy!

2 comments:

Suren said...

Hi Eric..
It seems to be good project.
I would like to know which motors you are using??
I would advise you to use DC motors as they give high velocity and very light in weight.U dont need relay to control them.They control is very simple.You can control them by L293D.
You can give output to l293D directly from your PIC16F627.Moreover u can control the speed of robot by software based PWM if u want to.Sharp IR sensors are good and they have nice precision.they are cheap also compared to Sonar ones.You can also go for Ultrasonic sensor.I would like to know how you control the robots via internet.I have a bit of idea in that but never used one.Maybe we both can discuss many things more.Please contact me at my email id : imsureniitr@gmail.com
Best Regards,
Suren Kumar

Eric said...

Im not familiar with the L293D. Can it distribute high currents to motors? If so I will probably use those ,due to my relays' slow switching speed. To tell the truth I only used relays because I had them lying around.
The internet idea is very simple, have a computer with visual basic and an interface kit controlling the robot directly. Then using remote assistance run that robot program from another computer.
Or you can use a different,cheaper approach found here.
http://www.shelato.com/SecurityRobot/
I'm not using that because I need a laptop on the computer, and that eliminates the need for a laptop.
Please just keep commenting on my blog. I'm currently working on a website where it will be easier to post things and I can post full reports.
Thank You for commenting.
,Eric