Meet Alysha and Arathoon

Nice,

It looks like you can extend that second layer out behind the drive wheels. Maybe add a third layer and you will have plenty of room for that box full of sensors:)

BTW, If Bill is looking for someone to help moderate the forum I would like to nominate you. Your breadth of knowledge and interests make you a great asset to a multi-dimensional field like robotic.

I'll be very interested in seeing how you progress with this project.  I was just starting to look into AI and I was wondering whether I could use a Raspberry Pi instead of the Jetson Nano, especially now that the Pi 4 is out.  I'd be interested on hearing about your experiences in that regard.  Bye the way, I really like how you have built your robots out of wood.  A really under-appreciated material for building robots it seems. ?

Posted by: twobits

BTW, If Bill is looking for someone to help moderate the forum I would like to nominate you. Your breadth of knowledge and interests make you a great asset to a multi-dimensional field like robotic.

I thank you very much for the recommendation.  I would love to help Bill out in any way I can, but unfortunately I don't have time to devote to moderating the forum.   I know it looks like I'm posting a lot, and I guess I am.  But I'm not really sitting here online all the time.  It may look like that because I leave the forum open in my browser so it shows I'm online.   But physically there's a real good chance that I'm outside mowing the lawn, cutting logs into lumber, repairing a tractor, or laying under my truck ripping out the transmission to install a new clutch.

I wouldn't even be playing with robots right now if it wasn't for Bill and his blasted Dronebot Forum. ? 

All you robotics geeks are posting everything you're doing and I can't help but want to play too.  So I've been getting out all my robot toys to see if I can try to catch up with you guys.

I'm one of those guys who knows just enough to be dangerous but not enough to actually offer any help.  I'm trying to learn how to program a Me Arm (you may have seen my thread on that), and what I'm learning real quick is that I don't even know how to program using C++ in the Arduino IDE.  Today, in between chores, I've been trying to study how to use the Serial Monitor utility effectively.  

And my chores are already falling behind.

But I would love to get Alysha and Arathoon up and running around on the floor.   And if they outgrow their bodies that's fine with me.  I'd love to get to a point where I'm forced to build bigger bodies.  That would mean that I've made quite a bit of progress. ? 

Their Raspberry Pi "brains" will just be transferred over to the newer bodies.  That's the idea.  I'm hoping they'll grow out of these little robot cars real soon.  The sooner they outgrow them the better.  That would mean that I'm coming along fairly well in terms of programming, etc.

Posted by: mjwhite

I'll be very interested in seeing how you progress with this project.  I was just starting to look into AI and I was wondering whether I could use a Raspberry Pi instead of the Jetson Nano, especially now that the Pi 4 is out.  I'd be interested on hearing about your experiences in that regard. 

We'll there are two ways to approach the subject.  One way is to just download massive programs that other people have written and try to use those.  If you use that approach then having a really powerful machine with lots of memory space is just about mandatory.

However, a second way to approach the subject is to write your own program from scratch which is what I intend to do.   If you look close I'm actually using an original Raspberry Pi A+.   Obviously I need an OS, and I'm running a lite version of Raspbian for that.  But in terms of the robot A.I. program I'll be writing that in Python from scratch.   My point here is that if, and when I reach a point where this A+ can no longer handle my program I will be more than thrilled to move up to a more powerful SBC.    But to be honest with you, I can't even imagine that day.  I really can't.   Maybe it's because I'm from the old school where 512KB of memory was like an ocean that I could never hope to fill with programming code.   Today we're talking about GB.   If I program beyond the capability of an A+ I'll consider that to be a major achievement.

So I don't expect to hit the ceiling using the A+ just yet.  Also, if I want to take advantage of something like Lidar or Object recognition, etc.  I can always add a Jetson Nano to the mix.  (obviously not on these little robot cars, but on a bigger body)  But the Jetson Nano wouldn't be the "A.I.".    In theory the little Raspberry Pi A+ could be the A.I. part of the robot.  The Jetson Nano would simply be serving as the "eyes" or whatever.

So yeah, I don't expect to need a more powerful SBC any time soon.

Posted by: mjwhite

 Bye the way, I really like how you have built your robots out of wood. A really under-appreciated material for building robots it seems. ?

I have a full wood shop in my back yard and lumber coming out my gazoo.   So wood is going to be my first choice whenever possible.   I almost built the entire robot chassis from wood, but laziness got the best of me.  At about $10 a piece these little plastic cars were too easy to assemble I couldn't pass them up.   But needing more room, wood came to the rescue for the upper layer. ? 

By the way.  The Raspberry Pies are just sitting on some breadboards for the photos.  I plan on building some wooden shelves for them too.  I just sat them there to show where they'll go.

The cars can be driven around just using the Megas for now.   I wish I  had more time to play with this stuff!