Mini-DARPA 2006-7 Autonomous Robot Takes First Steps

My high school students James Weis, John Wu, and Isaac Yang, modified a child's 4-wheeler toy, making it an autonomous vehicle. That is, the vehicle can drive itself. The vehicle is equipped with a sonic ranger to detect the presence of nearby objects. This video shows the initial steps of the robot. All it does here is move forward. If an object gets in the way, it stops. If the object moves away, the robot again moves forward. Eventually, the vehicle will also have a steering system and will autonomously find its way about the George School campus with the aid of a GPS module (EM-406A SiRF III from SparkFun).

Robodyssey Systems manufactures the RAMB II motherboard, which powers the robot's brain. The brain is NetMedia's BX-24 microcontroller, which is programmed using the BasicX language. I am the author of the world's only BasicX textbook; if you are interested in learning how to program your own robot, see my website at www.basicxandrobotics.com.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• robot
• computer
• programming
• electronics
• gadget
• mini
• DARPA
• autonomous
• vehicle
• sonic
• ranger
• BX-24
• BasicX
• George
• School

[RokSrakaCar]

i love robots! this one looks very good, but the program is so BORING. it just goes forwards until it sees something and than stops! "incredible"

If you really want to make a Mini-DARPA robot, make him travel a half a mile automonously!

[Kickhard66]

oh so cool!!