Robotic Bar Fridge

[Brendan986]

Hey, I'm in a group for our 3rd year college project in Electrical Engineering. We plan to make a robotic bar fridge that can come to you so you don't have to get up off the couch for a beer.

We plan on doing this using a microcontroller and PICAXE software for the wheels.

Question.

What electronics can I use so the microcontroller can read a value from a transmitter on the remote? Such as a frequency tx rx. We need it so the fridge starts moving, and if it moves away from the remote the frequency will decrease telling the wheels to turn around and go until the frequency/whatever increases.

 

[crutschow]

The "frequency/whatever" is the crux of the problem. The frequency of a remote does not change with distance. You need some other method for the fridge to determine distance and direction.

Some company makes an automatic golf caddy that follows the golfer, who is carrying a small transmitter. It uses some intelligent circuitry and a directional antenna to determine the direction to the remote. I believe it also uses the signal amplitude to judge distance.