[William] Had originally built a little Security Bot to roam the halls of his house while he was not at home. He wanted a little bit more and started Security Bot 2 to include a good pile of sensors and add pan and tilt control to the onboard camera. Thanks to ordering pieces from a “who’s who” list of robotic and electronic hobby shops, the bits and pieces quickly arrived making assembly less tedious.
Packed on board of the 4WD platform are IR switches, IR distanace sensors, line sensors, Ultrasonic sensor, an Xbee (soon to be replaced with a WiFi Shield), pan/tilt brackets/servo, SpeakJet/TTS/Speakers, LCD, battery, serial motor controller, ICSP pocket programmer, Arduino Mega 2560, DSS Circuits Fuel Gauges, plus motors, batteries, camera, leds and a wiimote connection. (whew, that’s a mouth full)
All put together with some perfboards, breakout boards and a lot of jumper wire Security Bot2 is ready to patrol your premises!
Nicely done :D :D mental hi 5
I really like this idea. I only wish he went into a little bit more detail on his build. I’m a bit of a noob when it comes to some of this stuff and I just want to understand how it all went together a bit better.
That is impressive. How does it navigate? (Is there a preset path, does it bump into things Roomba style, etc.)
This is an awesome idea. Personally, I would love to have a hexapod version walking around. One day…
@Leppy,
Man, why don’t we see more autonomous hexapods? usually all we see are radio controlled ones.
@Caleb
I think most people are happy to get the mechanical side of a hexapod working and aren’t so interested in autonomy. Plus with a lot of the hexapods you see, I’d imagine payload limits and/or interference from the legs would complicate mounting common sensors.
One of my labmates has been working on his own hexapod for a while, and while it’s not fully autonomous, he did use genetic algorithms to have it teach itself to walk, and has demonstrated vision-based path planning/obstacle avoidance for a class project.
http://www.ubergizmo.com/2011/05/young-roboticist-builds-hexapod-robot/
Lol. I should’ve patented the name ‘Security Bot 2’ (though it is a bit generic).
Had a build of a similar idea years ago for an embedded systems class, though our group’s version weighted in excess of 200 lbs, complete with harmonic gear boxes and hand-machined universal joints.
Those were the days!!
@krylenko You’re labmate is my hero for making that thing! I want that as a security hexapod bot. Maybe i’ll learn to make one eventually.
Yeah, it’s definitely an impressive build. It may not be the best choice for a security bot though, unless your intruders are really slow or it can move a lot faster than I’ve seen it go. :)
The first thing that I thought of was the security robots in that Tom Selleck film from ’84 “Runnaway”. He really needs to add a stun gun.
One nice addition would be a magnetic inductive charge pad. The security bot drives onto a plate, and the extra weight flips a micro switch which turning on the magnetic field to top up it’s batteries. Once the battery is full enough it drives away and the loss of weight turns off the magnetic field. It may not be the most efficient way to recharge but it would allow for a few security bots to use the system. One or two active while the other recuperates.
@Truth, I’ve made that joke to him several times, undeterred by the fact that the movie came out several years before he was born. Gotta get him to watch it on Netflix now…
Thanks for commenting on my robot. The picture above is the robot during testing. I should have some completed pictures up soon. I will try today. If you saw on the blog that the first robot has a charging dock I have made another one for this one. I didn’t go with inductive because of the efficiency. It would take forever to charge 2 batteries. It already takes a long time to charge 2 6600mAh batteries. Both sbot’s have cameras that get transmitted to my computer via their own 900mhz radio.
I like the robot!
I’ve seen lots of these robot chasis all marketed as Arduino robots.
Have you guys seen any projects that use any micros other than Arduinos? I like to use a similar chasis with a PIC.
@Tyler
You can use any MCU you want. DFRobot sells a custom Arduino for it that fits without drilling. I had to drill a few holes to mount the mega. That is all you would have to do to use another MCU, just drill mounting holes. There isn’t any special about it for use with the Arduino.
I post some completed pictures of the robot and of the control web site on my blog.