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Raspberry Pi
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Topic starter
2023-03-07 7:29 pm
I’ve read about robots that have dedicated subsystems to control short range sensing, communication, vision, etc. that feed a main robot controller. With the information acquired from the subsystems, the main controller implements a control algorithm which determines the behavior of the robot. I could see lots of advantages to this approach with the main disadvantage being its affect on battery life. So after a little experimentation I decided to give it a try. The plan is to use two Pico MCUs, one for the subsystem and another for the main controller. The subsystem will be set up as a I2C slave and the main controller as the I2C master.
I’m a through-hole kind of builder so I used the TSSP94056 IR receiver and TSAL6400 IR emitter from Vishay to create an 8 point IR sensor array. I should be able to use this for distance sensing and communication. Eventually I plan to add a photo-transistor and maybe some debug LEDs.
This is by far my most intricate board yet. One thing I’ve learned is that my soldering can be pretty sloppy and things still work, although I would never send this to the moon on NASA’s latest rocket…
Tom
To err is human.
To really foul up, use a computer.
2023-03-08 10:52 am
Although a couple of others also show some interest in robotics we all have a different approach 🙂
Just out of curiosity I tried to overlay the fourth image with the second and third image to see the connections.
To enlarge an image, right click image and choose Open link in new window.
Topic starter
2023-03-08 7:24 pm
How are things in Australia? I read that farm yields are up because of all the wet weather. It’s pretty green here too on the other side of the Pacific.
Although a couple of others also show some interest in robotics we all have a different approach
In my time with robots I’ve always found autonomous robots more interesting than ones that are guided by an external control device. I did put together a robot controlled by an iPad once, but got bored after driving it around for a few minutes.
You are a wizard with photo editing software!
Tom
To err is human.
To really foul up, use a computer.
2023-03-08 8:06 pm
Hi @thrandell
The rain resulted in all the rivers flooding onto the low lying areas resulting in shortages in things like potatoes and lettuce. Now the floods have receded leaving nutrients in the soil so farmers will get a good yield for a while. Rains make the grass grow producing fuel for fires. Australia is said to be a land of drought and flooding plains.
Autonomous robots are also my interest. A remote controlled robot may be very useful for many things apart from just being a toy and as they have a human brain operating them can do things we can't do with an autonomous robot. Robot brains are still very primitive.
I use the Paint program that comes with Windows. Your fourth image is easy for the human visual system to understand because we convert it into a description while in the computer it is just an array of pixel values. So we need to process the image to convert it into a description. We might start with a simple local threshold with this first result.
Then all sorts of cognitive demons can work on the image to clean it up, extract lines and so on ...