This is my second autonomous mini-sumo design, and I call this one "Seeker",
to follow after MicroSeeker. This one is very
much a stealthy design. It is under 3" high, but it packs a lot of power into that
small size. Right now, it weighs in at about 420 grams, but I still have one more tiny
(1.2" x 0.75") pcb board to add, and the four bottom-facing IR sensors.
And yes, this is a fully-operational robot right now.
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March 6, 2002 -- Here's a
picture of the new chassis I am building for Seeker. It does not have the wedge on the
front anymore -- instead it has room for a AAA 6-cell NiMh battery pack to run the motors. I
still have more mounting holes to drill, and right now the chassis structure is just
sitting on top of the base plate. |
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Here's a rear view of the new chassis. The
support bars are made from 1/4" x 3/4" aluminum bar that has been milled down
from 3/4" to 5/8" high. I will be drilling a bunch of 3/8" holes in the
aluminum bars to reduce the weight. |
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Here's the new chassis, with the old one next to
it in comparison. The new one is much more precisely machined. The old one is not screwed
together here, the pieces are just sitting on top of the old base plate. The new chassis
as it sits right now weighs about 45 grams more than the old version, and I need to remove
most of that excess weight. |
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December 22, 2001 -- Here it is
with the first coat of flat black on the shell. I am very pleased with how Seeker has
turned out in terms of the way it looks. |
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Here you can see it with the RF telemetry board
attached. Of course, I won't be competing with this board in place, as it makes the bot
too large & heavy, but while I am practicing and developing and debugging, it will
give me a way to get real-time feedback from the bot, as well as change certain parameters
that I can save in the data EEPROM of the main CPU, the 16F877. The board itself is just
a simple dual perf-board from Radio Shack, with the RF module mounted on one side, and a
PIC 16F876 mounted on the other side. There is a 4-wire connection to this board, which
includes power, ground, serial I/O, and a presence indicator. The RF module is an SC
transceiver from Linx. |
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December 18, 2001 -- So here it is, with the
shell pretty much finished. The final product will be painted flat black of course, but
other than that this is pretty much what it is going to look like. It sits at a slight
forward angle to make sure the front wedge scrapes the floor, and it has a couple teflon
sliders in the back to keep it at that angle. |
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Here you can see a rear quarter view, and the
"control panel" is visible through a hole cut in the shell. The control panel
has the on/off switch, a push-button momentary contact switch (for starting a match), a
blue power indicator LED, a red heartbeat flasher LED, and a 4-pin connector for the RF
telemetry daughterboard.
You can see the two white teflon slider pads at the bottom in this picture. |
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This is a front quarter view. The side panels
are mostly done -- just some final filing to shape them. The dual sonars are mounted in
the front, in a mount I designed & built. You can see the two blue terminal blocks
on the h-bridge board just under the IR sensors -- these are the outputs to the left &
right motor.
And yes, that big chip at the top you can just see the edge of is a PIC 16F877... |
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Here's a side view. All the external aluminum
pieces will be painted flat black. I need to make some adjustments to the ribbon cable
connector that is sticking above the line of the top -- it all needs to fit inside the
shell, which will follow the contour of the side panels. The aluminum wedge at the front
has an integral spring-loaded dual bump sensor. |
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And here's the front view, from the opponents
point of view. Of course, once the shell is done you won't see any of the internal
details, but I think this shot is pretty cool anyways. |
