Atom-R1

By lanternfish
@ May 19, 2009

• Control method: Autonomous.
• CPU: PICAXE14M
• Sensors / input devices: IR
• Target environment: indoor

 Update: 26 June 2009

 A bit of a hiatus

Pager motors arrived from Solarbotics. Then thay sat on a co-workers desk for a week before he decided to tell me they had arrived.

Holonomic wheels causing problems so have opted to go for table tennis balls/polymorph. Thanks to emuller for proving this concept with Three wheeling doover.

Have built quad motor driver (2 x L293D) board, processor (28X1) board and sensor (IR LED & Receiver) on strip board(s).

Software tested both in simulation and with above boards. Need to tweak IR sensor for reduced range. Other than that, all good.

Update: 4 June 2009

Good things and not so good things

Cellphones arrived. And upon dismantling - no vibrating motor. Hmmm!? Brochure says they have vibrate mode. Damned if I know. Scored some NiMH batteries though! And tiny 8ohm speakers. Displays no good though. Oh well!

 Have ordered pager motors from Solarbotics. GM6's would not fit in lower body.

 Holonomic wheels coming along. Polymorph is great stuff. Having so much fun with it. And an artist (sculpture) friend has taken some away to play with.

Have ordered L293Ds, 38kHz IR receivers and a couple of other bits from Surplustronics (a local PICAXE and other good bits supplier) here in NZ.

Now, if only had a little more free time to continue with the build.

Update: 27 May 2009

Traction - How to make it go

After a lot of thought, and having looked at the RS Tri-Bot, I have decided to use three motor/gearbox combinations (Solarbotics GM6) to drive three holomonic wheels.

As I have not been able to find 30mm dia. holomonic wheels I will have to make my own (ouch!). Will be playing around with a couple of ideas over the next few days.

I have designed a Dual L293D H-bridge motor controller board to control the motors and LEDs in the legs. 

I have also finished the design for the main processor pcb. The processor has changed to a PICAXE 28X1 or 28X2 to allow more program space for controlling the motion of the robot.

What's Inside

Upper Right: On/Off button  Centre: Head shell  Upper Right: Bulkhead with contact arcs

Lower Right: Bezel.                                          Lower Right: On/Off switch & pc

The contact arcs mate with two contacts on battery compartment (below)

Upper Left: Battery compartment (3 x AAA)  Upper Right: Rubber 'torso'

Lower Left: Lower bulkhead. Secures 'torso'  Lower Right: Vibrator Motor

 Body with motor assembly                          Body without motor assembly 

                                                                                   Wires are for LEDs in legs

      Body and legs from below                                Lower Body Shell

LED assembly. Leg mounting flange                            Leg internals          

                                         Disassembled Leg

It Begins

Update: 22 MAY 2009

Have four cellphones on their way to recycle for motors and batteries (and whatever else I can harvest from them).

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  Having spent a bit of time looking at the many creations here on Lets Make robots, and on other websites, I still wasn't sure what type of robot I wanted to build. Then I stumbled across the Atom Massager at a local DSE (NZ) store.

 At this point I have disassembled the massager, removed the motor and am measuring up the space available.

 The plan is to install two pager motors (preferably with planetary gearboxes) controlled by an L293D (PWM controlled) via a PICAXE14M. I have also been spending some time developing the code I think will be needed.

 Quite a bit of work will need to be done on designing the traction system. I have received some good suggestions from Nebster and Oddbot on this.