Robot Project Day 0 – Procurement and Preparation

Robot Project Index

Design Considerations

First we need to define the purpose of having this robot, besides for showing it off to your parents and friends.

Then we need to decide what the robot can do. Set up a GOAL. A goal for the robot must be SMART.

• Specific
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Relevant
• Timely

Yes, you can build and launch a moon rover and probably hitch-hike Richard Branson’s Virgin Galatic ride and try to land it safely onto moon’s surface somehow, or you can build a simple miniature of it. Something within your reach. So lets get started.

Linux Circle’s robot purpose is for education and sharing about it in seminars, blogs, and forums, we might even write a book about it. So this is an educational robot. What about our SMART goal?

Specific: We are going to build a clutter picker robot and call it Raspi Gert Gripper Rover (RGGR). This can run move 8 directions and has an arm gripper that can tilt up and down.

Measurable: RGGR can help clean up house clutters on the floor. It must run up to 20cm/second, good enough to cover apartment floor in a few minutes,  and must be accessible by any computer connected to the same Wifi as the robot.

Attainable: RGGR is achievable within 10 days, requiring 1 amateur engineer with decent knowledge of Linux, basic networking, and Arduino programming. It must cost less than $450, because we want school kids to save $15 each day for a month and afford this thing.

Relevant: We dont want to build space-bot, or useless toy, we want to FOCUS on fulfilling its main purpose, which is to help picking up clutters in the house. 4 wheels and 1 gripper is all we need for now.

Timely: We have 10 days. Each day we could spend 3-4 hours concentrating fully on making a progress.

Draw up what you think your robot will look like or browse more to get more ideas.

 

Obtaining the Kits

What you need to get:

• Rover Chassis: Tank / 4WD / 2WD
• Raspberry Pi with Raspbian SD Card
• Gertboard
• Gertboard mounting chassis
• Dagu 4 channel motor controller
• Wifi USB dongle
• Robot Arm & Hand Kits
  • Tilt bracket & servo
  • Hand gripper & servo
• Power Supplies
  • 1 x 5v 10,000 mAh power pack for Raspberry Pi & Gertboard
  • 2 x 7.2v 3300 mAh Ni-MH RC car batteries
  • 1 x power supply voltage regulator / converter 6v (you can build one)
  • 1 x power supply voltage regulator / converter 5v (you can build one)
• Power wires
• Breadboard wires
• Mini USB cables

Equipment and Toolkit

• Pair of scissors
• Solder
• Cable cutter
• Screw drivers
• Voltage meter
• PC / Laptop running Ubuntu
• Double tape / selotape

Next: Day 1 – Chassis & Motors

Tags: project