MADErover, my uni project

[klims]

Hey guys,

So this semester as part of a 3rd year subject Uni gave us 400 bucks to build a robot to be ready in 12 weeks.
This is what we came up with:

i got theses photos from a phone video so they are not the greatest quality…

not sure if its very clear from the photos, but this beast is supposed to be an exploration rover, based on the ‘spirit’ mars rover.

the project is made up of the buggy and the landing pod. the basic idea is that this little self contained unit could be landed in an area to be explored and via an on board camera give video feedback. its fully autonomous, meaning it is not controlled by a user. all the actions are programmed in and it makes decisions based on sensor input, being sonar and infrared.
the landing pod can upright itself from any face. it uses one servo that is powered and run from the rover.
the buggy has an on board micro that controls sonar, infrared and the opening of the pod. its bases on the micro-t with a custom made chassis and iwaver 04 wheels. strangely enough they just slotted straight over the micro-t tires. it was a perfect fit!

id love to put up some video but have no idea how or where. its a little more impressive when seen in action. if anyone could give me some directions that would be great.

so, what do you guys think? any feedback would be great.

Andrew.

• This topic was modified 9 years, 1 month ago by Aaron.

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[brycevr]

Love it!!
What parameters does programming cover?

[PandaBear]

upload the vid to youtube and post here the link 🙂

[klims]

<a href="here is a link to a video

not the greatest display of our rovers “intelligence” but you get the idea.

programming covers all parameters that the rover uses. MADErover is entirely controlled by the on board microcontroller.
the code is written to make decisions based on all inputs available, ie: sonar, infrared, bump

edit: for some reason the link isn’t working.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KjaA3uvyy0

[z-beam]

nice use of a pre fabricated car design to keep costs down. is this for use on earth though?

i thought the mars rover designs only worked because of the reduced gravity, and even then at least one of the european ones failed on impact.

gonna test the landing capability off a roof ? 😉

please say no hehe. but if you do you gotta get a video of it.

[klims]

thanks z-beam.

when we initially dreamed up the idea it was supposed to be for use anywhere what had conditions to suit the little rover, however as you can see the end product is not nearly as robust and pretty as we had hoped. i guess there is only so much you can do in 12 weeks on a limited budget.

as for landing capability we did intend to drop it but after putting so much time and effort into the little bugger we weren’t really willing to drop it and face the possibility of having to start back at square one in week 10 of the semester. the tolerances are pretty tight on the container and all the features for dropping it are there, all it would need is some padded inner and outer walls and rounded corners. we all agreed that we wouldn’t drop it though

as for the reduced gravity on mars thing i never really thought of that. the unit is robust enough to drive on earth. only thing that really sucks on it is the speed. i guess ideally the wheels would have a sensor that feeds back to the micro to keep track of how fast its going. at the moment its just “tuned” to drive at the right speed.

thanks for the feedback,
Andrew.

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