YourITronics

It’s great fun building robots, the most simple one is a vehicle robot, in other words a small car, the next step is to add some remote control, wireless off course, by wireless most of you probably think of radio control, yes that has long range, works trough obstacles, maybe even trough solid walls, but building one can be a real challenge, and buying one can be expensive. The author of this project solved this issue by using a simple TV remote control.

The original project is quite limited regarding the functions, only forward and reverse controls are possible, since it has just one motor, but it’s easy to improve the design, my choice would be to use two motors, each with separate H bridge, this is the easiest way the steer it.

The source code is written for ICC compiler and is made available for download, if you adapt it to AVR-GCC then you can adapt it to work with any type of remote control and start adding some intelligence to the robot, like line following, maze solving and many more.

IR remote robot: [Link]

This is a simple robotics project, but with great potential  and lot of fun, the only drawback is that you need a Wii fit or Xbox360 game controller, the rest is affordable. The Wii fit stepper plate position is interpreted by the Arduino board and sent to the servos, basically you control the labyrinth game with your foot.

I think that the project can be easily developed further, you can make a replacement hardware for the Wii fit, and the wooden game can also be customized, there are many possibilities to expand, maybe you will attach a webcamera and make an intelligent robot which solves the puzzle by itself.

Arduiono+Wii fit:[Link]

Everybody knows how a printer works, put in a blank paper and comes out a paper with picture or drawing on it, a couple of years this idea was developed further, what happens if instead of depositing a single layer of material, the machine deposits many layers of material? You have a 3D printer, it isn’t sci-fi anymore, many rapid prototyping companies use this technology, the Olympic stadium in Beijing was modeled using a 3D printer, did you know that a 3D printers costs about 4-5000$, and it is estimated the price will drop to 1000$ in four years.

How does the 3D printer work? Well it is similar to a 3D CNC machine, it can move one of its parts in X,Y,Z plan, but instead of attaching a mill, they attach a plastic extruder, so instead of milling away the excess material, they deposit layer by layer the plastic. By doing so the machine can make more complex parts, there are many technologies, some machines deposit a fine layer of melted polyester, or dust and so on.

There are a bunch of manufacturers which sell these printers, but a group of open minded people said, why not make a cheap affordable machine, which can be put together in a garage, the idea goes even further, they want to make a machine which is capable of replicating itself, no wonder the first version was named Darwin.  You can buy as a kit, or you can download the design and try to make it yourself from scratch, you can find allot of tutorials, videos, free soft but even so, it is a complex machine.

Probably will pas a couple of years until a true self replicating machine will be built, the material supported is plastic, the metal parts, like screws and motors need to be purchased separately.

Self replicating hardware: [Link]

This is a very interesting DIY project, a little Segway, off course it won’t carry you but it will self balance. The brain of the robot is the Arduino board, the entire robot is powered from a battery,  although the author tried to keep the cost to minimum the final “price” was above 300$.

The sensor for the balancing algorithm was a 2 way accelerometer and one encoder in each motor, all the electronics was bought as a kit, since the author as he stated, a programmer. This can be encouraging for those who want to replicate the robot, since you don’t need to be a hardware guru to build it.

The control algorithm needs a lot of adjusting, trial and error tests and patience.

The balancing robot has one major inconvenient, how to get it up? It is a lot of fun doing it and certainly it is a noticible achievement, but in lack of control it will just stay in one place. I recommend this project to students who want to experiment with different control algorithms like PID, Fuzzy.

Balancing robot: [Link]

This application explains how to make a light detector for ARobot. This can be used to tell when a light is on or off, whether the robot is inside or outside, or for light following. This is a simple expansion and does not require soldering if using a breadboard.

It does assume that you have attached a breadboard and an expansion cable to the ARobot . This circuit and the light sensor could be mounted and soldered to a perf board and located to a movable head. Multiple light detector sensors could be used to detect the direction of light.

Light Detector Application: [Link]