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Wed, 07 Jun 2006
latest news ...
We've been really busy building and shipping robots since releasing the "tracked" version, especially after the SRV-1 got very visible coverage on www.engadget.com, so there hasn't been much time to write about various projects. However, we've caught up for the moment, waiting for a batch of USB radio boards to come from the PCB fabricators (we've moved beyond using the skillet for mounting the SMD components), so it seemed like a good time to update the robotics journal.
One of the production issues we've encountered has been with variation in stiffness of the tank treads - we've developed a procedure to pre-stretch the treads in advance of mounting on the robots, but we're also getting bids from fabricators to build our own treads and hubs. The basic design of the existing drive components is good, but we'd like a somewhat softer material for the treads, and we want to add a flat surface to the inside rim of the hub to host some reflective markings which can be used to add incremental wheel encoder functionality. Creating our own molds will be expensive, but should pay off in the long run.
Regarding wheel encoders, we've received a number of requests for this functionality, and have come up with a very low cost approach, as mentioned above, by marking the inner rims of the hubs with a reflective pattern and using an optical emitter/detector pair to catch the markings as they rotate by, taking advantage of the capture/counter registers on the ARM7. We'll be prototyping this setup next week, and plan to add the functionality to future circuit boards. We'll also look at the possibility of a retrofit kit for existing robots.
Other than that, we have a lot of work to do on the software. The next Java base station console update will include a "notification" feature, so that certain messages from the robots will trigger HTTP requests from the console. Notification examples might include CGI posts that would trigger the sending of emails, SMS or pages, browser alerts, etc, based on motion detection, object recognition, robot functional problems, etc. On the robot firmware side, we're working on development of some basic autonomous behaviors, as well as the framework for coordination of multiple robots through the IR data link. These are big tasks, but we'll hopefully be able to provide some of the basic components that enable others to build interesting applications.
Posted Wed, 07 Jun 2006 14:25 | HTML Link | see additional stories ...