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This page is long overdue. We have had the information scattered all over our website, but this page tries to put it all in one place. It is for programmable Robots or Autonomous Robots including Arduino support, Sensor support, state machines, etc. The support page is located here. Let us know what you think and what other information you would like to see. Thanks!
Hi folks, I started out a classroom project where I started with a lightweight robot then as the bot and power demands grew; I ended up where I had to use heavy duty Motor controllers (20amp). I was using bluetooth to connect an XBox controller to a raspberry pi and the pi connected to Simple Motor Controllers (Pololu) using serial communications. All of the hardware was mounted on the bot. It worked long enough to give the kids proof of concept, but it was very flaky. Not just the bluetooth part but serial communications code seemed to work perfectly for a while then not. I put the project aside for …a year. Now I would like to do this right. I want a more robust communication system with the robot so that I can send commands and rely on some autonomous code on board the bot for safety (stopping when encountering an obstacle. Any ideas of a general design?
Hey Frank. We don’t really offer a general design for autonomous robots. Builds vary depending on budget and application. For a simple robot that travels an approximate distance while avoiding collisions, wheel encoders and sonar distance sensors would suffice. A more complex and robust system would include wheel encoders, IMU, and a spinning LiDAR to map out an environment to plan safe paths to a goal. We use both serial and Ethernet to communicate with these sensors. If you want to discuss you application in more detail, please fill out our custom request form.
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