Misterbenn
Active Member
Hey there guys, now i dont want you to think i'm just another student asking you to do his project for him, i'm starting work on a autonomous roving vehicle for my 2nd year project and would be thankfull for any input / shared experience you can give me.
so starting spec:
vehicle followes a reflective track on a smooth surface (so were talking optical sensors .... advice welcome!)
at the end of the track a reflective strip will be layed across the track at 90deg to the main guide strip. at this point the rover has to reverse around the course. (the course is an octogon shape .... so we have corners of pre-defined angle to negotiate)
both strips will be 25mm wide.
to carry a container of 600g,
to clime and desend slopes of 5%
vehicle must not exceed 160mm in width lenght or hight.
no comunication with vehicle after it has entered the course.
slidding contact between rover and strip is not allowed.
a bugget of max £25 for the entire project
the spec is fairly detailed so not all that much design involved really.
i'm thinking 3 wheeled vehicle with the two back wheels providing the drive via a DC motor, and then via a gear box.
the single front wheel to control direction with a stepper motor
we'll be using the pic16F84A or pic16F628
in order to stay on track and detect the end of course line we'll be using 2 optical sensors further apart than the track width (taking into acount the corner width of the track) thus thus when an optical sensor is triggerd by light the rover will steer in that direction in order to keep the track between the sensors if you see what i mean. when both sensors are triggerd then we kno we've reached the end of the track.
we were also thinking of slowing down at corners because we heard a major problem is the rover just shooting off the track at corners...prob due the the fact that the steering lags behind a lil. Also we want to think about steering angle and if we should turn around or just reverse at the end of the course?
saddly because of the bugget i'm getting most my components from ebay so we wont have best performance in that sence.... i think i heard some1 say in a previouse thred that floppy drives have a nice stepper motor in them ...i could prob get one of them quite cheep.
if any1 has any thoughts or suggestions or experience they wish to share please add to this thred
Thanks
Andy
so starting spec:
vehicle followes a reflective track on a smooth surface (so were talking optical sensors .... advice welcome!)
at the end of the track a reflective strip will be layed across the track at 90deg to the main guide strip. at this point the rover has to reverse around the course. (the course is an octogon shape .... so we have corners of pre-defined angle to negotiate)
both strips will be 25mm wide.
to carry a container of 600g,
to clime and desend slopes of 5%
vehicle must not exceed 160mm in width lenght or hight.
no comunication with vehicle after it has entered the course.
slidding contact between rover and strip is not allowed.
a bugget of max £25 for the entire project
the spec is fairly detailed so not all that much design involved really.
i'm thinking 3 wheeled vehicle with the two back wheels providing the drive via a DC motor, and then via a gear box.
the single front wheel to control direction with a stepper motor
we'll be using the pic16F84A or pic16F628
in order to stay on track and detect the end of course line we'll be using 2 optical sensors further apart than the track width (taking into acount the corner width of the track) thus thus when an optical sensor is triggerd by light the rover will steer in that direction in order to keep the track between the sensors if you see what i mean. when both sensors are triggerd then we kno we've reached the end of the track.
we were also thinking of slowing down at corners because we heard a major problem is the rover just shooting off the track at corners...prob due the the fact that the steering lags behind a lil. Also we want to think about steering angle and if we should turn around or just reverse at the end of the course?
saddly because of the bugget i'm getting most my components from ebay so we wont have best performance in that sence.... i think i heard some1 say in a previouse thred that floppy drives have a nice stepper motor in them ...i could prob get one of them quite cheep.
if any1 has any thoughts or suggestions or experience they wish to share please add to this thred
Thanks
Andy