Tom Handley wrote:
>   Dan, it must be that time of year! My robot has been in a box
>all summer and I'm ready to get back to work on it. Where I left
>off, I had a dual-deck chassis with dual Tamiya worm gear drives,
>basic bumper switches, and IR sensors. I was having problems
>with the Vector 2X compass and may just use the lower resolution
>`heading' mode since I'm mainly using it to hold a heading. I had
>also tested a few versions of ultrasonic detectors.
>


Hi Tom,

well it's been 7-8 months since we had the robot follies on piclist,
so maybe time to come round again :).

I've been "thinking" about bots a lot, but been bogged down in
other F&G. As I recall, Roman spent exactly 2 hours one evening
building and programming his bot, and then grabbed the PIC and
ran off to do something else. [geez, those motorcycle racers].
I've  spent lots more time than that just "thinking" about mine.
Saw the Radio Shack tank cheap and figured what the heck.

I did design my PIC74/77 botboard several months ago, and picked
up some $5 PIR sensors plus an ultrasonic movement detector
from Hostfelt last week, so now I am about ready to go.

Also "designed" [in concept] a whole pile of other bot-thingies
in the meantime. Originally I planned to have the tank terrorize
the neighbors' cat, but they moved away, so I designed a bot-cat
this week, among other things :).

My interest is not so much in the mechanical end of things, but
in the programming/behavioral stuff. What I am really itching
to do is play with subsumption techniques. Apparently you can
get some really cool emergent behavior out of this. "Mobile
Robots" by Jones & Flynn has a really good description - you
should take a look if you havena seen the book.
==============


>   One new thing I want to add is a low cost camera. I have a
>wireless XCAM2 camera and I found a site with antenna hacks
>for the camera. The main thing is replacing the directional
>`paddle' antenna with a dipole or 1/4 wave ground plane. One
>version uses 5 3cm stubs to make a 1/4 wave ground plane.
>These were tested in R/C helicopters.
>

If your bot is large enuf, 12" or so, you might consider
getting one of those off-the-shelf 900 mhz A-V transmitter-
receiver pairs - can probably be found for $70-80 at Ckt
City/etc, and will be FCC approved. And your bot will look
like a low-flying saucer.

I expect you are going to write some nice robust machine vision
code and not simply send the pics - yes ???? ;-)
==========


>   Is that the same tank we talked about last winter? Keep us
>up to date on all the `gory' details! ;-)
>

I imagine this must be the same tank, only now it is $20 cheaper
on sale.

Maybe we'll get to hear from a few others about their bot F&G
too. I've discovered there are very few PIC-botters around,
most use 68HCxx.

best regards,
- dan michaels
www.oricomtech.com
=============================

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