Mini-DARPA 2006-7 Autonomous Robot Takes First Steps

My high school students Clayton Carson and Annie Wu (and not pictured Michael Tseng and Ryan Smith) are building on last year's team's work of modifying a child's 4-wheeler toy to make it autonomously navigate the 256-acre George School campus. That is, when it is all said and done the vehicle will drive itself.

Here is video of the first steps the robot took with the new batch of students in 2007-8. First, they programmed the robot's wheels to spin for three seconds and then shut off. Next, they equip the vehicle with a sonic ranger to detect the presence of nearby objects. If the rover gets to within 40 inches of an object, the robot's brain will kill the motor. Unfortunately, the robot's battery was dead, so it moves rather slowly.

All the robot can do now is move forward and stop. In the next iteration, they will make the robot follow a person walking in a straight line. Next, it will navigate around objects. Eventually, the vehicle will autonomously find its way around the 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

[Xxsomebody1xX]

Alot of basic progamming here, I use C++ for mine, have fun with the GPS!