Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Projects With Ryan Slaugh: Hack-Bot”.
Robots are fun to play with they’re even more fun to build in this article. I’Ll show you how to make a simple robotics platform with parts you can easily find when you’re finished, building you’ll have a robot capable of interfacing with a plethora of sensors, and that will give you a lot of programming possibilities to start the build. We need to assemble our parts servos to give the robot mobility, two of them needed sensors to give input more on those later and a brain, in this case, the arduino mega to help the robot make decisions. The body of the robot is made of foam core quarter inch foam core.
It’S easy to find, inexpensive and rigid enough to handle the job. The body itself was actually modeled. After a lid off of 5 gallon bucket using the lid as a template, i was able to cut the shape into the foam core.
Make sure you do this cutting on a surface that nobody minds if you cut through after making a good clean cut, we’re left with the perfect size for our robot body? Next, i will use the lid to help me find the center of the circle. I use my drill here, but you can also use a nail or whatever it takes to put a hole through the center of the lid and into the foam core directly into the center of the robot body. Using this mark, i can then draw a line through the center of the circle itself. This is important to line up our wheels properly. I chose the size of the body based on the size of the wheels available for this type of robot. I use two wheels to find these wheels.
Well, have tuna fish for lunch, then using the can themselves lay out how much room they need to spin freely inside the outer edge of the robot body so mark, basically the width of the wheel itself. One side, then the other then standing up the wheel, how much depth into the circle that the wheel needs using my trusty ruler and sharpie. I lay out the rectangles.
I need to cut to mount the wheels into the body and then cut them out once my cutting is complete. I have a nice rectangle in which my wheel will fit perfectly well, pretty close to perfectly maybe some shaving needed a little later. Next, i need to mount the cans.
I mean wheels to the servo motors. Each servo has a gear head that can be removed. This can then be mounted to the can using small screws.
I use the gear head as an actual template to pre-drill the wheels after the pre-drill is done. I put the gear head back on the servo and then using those small screws securely mount the wheel to the gear head. This gives a nice solid mounting. Next, we want to mount the motors to the body of the robot. We want to make sure that the axis of the servo is lined up with the center of the robot body. This will keep things from wobbling and getting out of shape later line.
It up carefully make sure it’s out far enough that the screws that you put into the wheel don’t hit the body itself and secure it down. In this case, i used hot glue with the motors and wheels securely in place. We have a teeter-totter i’ll spare you the play-by-play for the rest of the mounting of parts to the body.
Besides, maybe your way is better than mine to get rid of the teeter totter. I added some half inch pvc caps. These will glide pretty much along any surface really well and they add some stability to the platform.
I also did some wiring. I added some sensors and the mega here are some pir or passive infrared motion: sensors, a ping sensor which i’m not going to use right now and our servo motors also on the wheels. I added some rubber bands for traction.
There’S a breadboard here with two five volt regulators on it and the board now has a nine volt battery for power to the system. Then comes the fun part. The programming here you get to determine the thought patterns of your robot.
I first started out with a sketch making the robot move around in a square. This helped me determine if i had the motors mapped right most times. You’Ll need to tweak the settings on the servos via the screw adjustment on the side to get them set in the sketch.
You will adjust your pulse widths for proper speed and direction. The second sketch i added the pir sensors and see how the robot reacted to motion around it. In reality, you are determining how the robot thinks this can be challenging, but the most fun part of this exercise included. This video are the two sketches that i mentioned. Now you have a platform and the building blocks needed to make any modification. You want. I wired my robot with jumper wires, so i can easily change anything out if i want to there’s plenty of room for more sensors or you can change them completely out. There’S even some nice real estate right here in the center of the robot body.
Looking around, what can i fit there? Oh wait a minute. This little toy looks promising. Ah, look at that perfect fit now after i hack the toy and change my programming. I have a robot that searches for movement and keeps you on your toes good luck with your robot build .