Update on Leo

Well got the rear bumper fixed, so Leo no longer has a ghetto bumper and won't be a hazard to knit shirts or other robots.

Leo's Ghetto Bumper or Most Embarrassing Pic for a Bot

Dayum, I'm good, only had to modify one hole in the bumper to get the bumper on. Actually, pure luck since at the time I drilled the holes to put on the aluminum plate I didn't have the part or know what I was going to use.

Just a bad pic of a decent job.

Monday I should be getting in the new motors for Leo, they can go up to 12V.  I can now run 9v batteries all around if I want and probably will once Leo goes into UAV mode and can take care of his own charging duties.

Leo's Ghetto Bumpers

Here's a pic of Leo's Ghetto Bumpers. One can improvise badly, yanno LOL

Leo's Ghetto Bumpers

Just laying out some thoughts

Ok to keep Leo moving in the direction he's supposed to be I'm going to use:

A1302 Hall Effect Sensors on his front idlers coupled with magnets to give feedback on his track speed.

2125 Mesmic Accelerometer is used to detect and calculate drift on carpet, smooth floors, track skidding and bumps in the floor.

Even with those, there is still going to be a lot of error from track skidding, carpet nap, bumps in the floor, track wear, and from not being put back down exactly where he got picked up.

Going to use a PING(or other sonar type sensor) and a sharp or two map out his local environment to cross reference with his internal map. Basically, trying to program Leo in a fashion that biologicals think or at least my poor understanding of how I perceive my self and others do things.

Voltage monitors will be implemented as well so that Leo just doesn't 'die' in the middle of the room. He will know when to return to his base(home) to re-charge(to eat). So will have to figure out how to get a charging circuit into his little body as well as everything else.

Finally better

I am finally over the strep, man alive that is some bad bad mojo. I did get a chance to do quite a bit of reading between naps(about 20+) because my schedule was wake up, take antibiotic, take cough meds, pass out, repeat. I did get a chance to re-read a lot of the bot stuff though, and have decided to make a small change in plans. I was going to make a freeduiono board with screw terminal blocks becuase I get tired of when Leo hits a bump or rolls over that a wire somewhere on the arduino comes loose.

The change is that there is going to be two boards, one to control Leo's body and one to do mapping, read sensors, make decisions, etc. The first board will control the drive motors, the neck and head position motors, and monitor their position and state sensors. I should be getting the parts in the next few days for both boards. It will be fun putting them together and then getting them to talk to each other. Leo will go from one MCU to two and will have two L293D chips. I'll be ordering the better motors for him this Thursday. Only a few things left to get for Leo. Need to find a sonic ranger, a PIR sensor, a mini servo.