Subject:
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Autonomous Robot
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.robotics
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Date:
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Tue, 1 Aug 2000 19:27:27 GMT
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Viewed:
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1029 times
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I had an idea to a project that I want to start in a very slow pace. In
fact, it is based in lots of ideas already presented here in this list so I
am not sure if someone already tried it before. Any help is welcome.
The main goal is to build a Lego robot able to navigate inside my home
without assistance. Although it is simple, it involves a lot of issues, some
of then already discussed here. The main approach follows:
1) I will use a landmark approach to navigation. There was a long and very
good discussion on this matter a few months ago. This approach means that
the robot will know how to reach an specific location at home moving through
these landmarks positioned at specific locations. These landmarks be used
both to tell the robot it arrived a specific location and act as a
mid-course correction so that it can reorient itself. There are 2 options
for the landmarks:
a) Piece of paper with lines and color marks. They would have a kind of "bar
code" to identification and lines for reorientation through line following
algoritms.
b) A kind of docking station made of lego pieces. The shapes of the robot
and station should be in a way that the robot could dock to the station in a
way that it points to a specific direction, so that it would reset
orientation. The identification would be a sequence of colored bricks.
Ploblems I already thought about:
-How to implement a bar code, line following, colision detection etc. with
the limitation of sensors of a single RCX?
-How to implement the reorientation in a efficient manner?
-Mapping algoritm: Can it be implemented with NQC alone? QC and LegOS would
be an alternative. I was thinking about a hard-coded map in NQC to start. I
have ideas about that to discuss later.
2) I would like the robot to be able to recharge its own batteries. The RCX
can detect the low battery state, so I need a way to recharge them. The
approach I thought about was to use the 1.0 version with an external battery
pack (9.6V). When it feels hungry (low battery), it would go to a special
docking station (in fact a second RCX based robot) that would dettach its
external battery, replace it with another pack or recharge it. The robot
would sleep (wait for charging) until it has a battery available. The
internal batteries would be used to keep it on only so they would last much
longer.
I did not test if the RCX keeps on if an outside power source is removed
even with internal batteries yet. If not, some tampering would be necessary
(2 packs connected with diodes with fake batteries?)
Problems I already thought about:
-The batteries connectors must be easy to attack and detach;
-Possible ripple problem;
-Battery replacement station mechanics may not be simple...
-Is there a problem with 9.6V with the RCX? I believe someone already used
it.
Although the main idea seens complex, I believe it is feasible with Lego
bricks. All I need is to solve one problem at the time and join the pieces
later...
Any comments, suggestions and ideas are welcome!
Mauro Roberto Vianna
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Message has 3 Replies:
 | | Re: Autonomous Robot
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| (...) <snip a really interesting concept> Wow, I would love to see documentation of the process you go through here. Alone you might get discouraged with so complex a task. I got the Mindstorms 1.0 a few months ago but have yet to really fool with (...) (24 years ago, 1-Aug-00, to lugnet.robotics)
| | | Re: Autonomous Robot
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| I like these ideas. Pls keep the newsgroup up to date. I hope that you find a good and simple solution for the docking statio. I once made a bot which docked to a certain group of Legopieces...... ....That was all he could do and I used "billions of (...) (24 years ago, 1-Aug-00, to lugnet.robotics)
| | | Re: Autonomous Robot
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| Hi Mauro I find your project very challenging, being navigation one of my main interests inside Lego-robotics. About 18 months ago I made my first experience with pure odometry (no external landmarks) and found that in the short range it is *very* (...) (24 years ago, 2-Aug-00, to lugnet.robotics)
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