My private robot project still hasn't advanced lately.

However here is another demonstration of the work, which I'm doing at University.

My private robot-project hasn't advanced lately.
However there are news in context with the MiCRoN-project.
M. Boissenin (a PhD student) and me have achieved results, which may be a small breakthrough in the specialised field of computer-vision for microscopes.

For more information, see the results-page.

Unfortunately there are conflicting requirements on the kernel-version (by ndiswrapper for running Wireless-card and by the RTAI realtime operating system). I'll leave this problem for later.

I bought the PCAN interface, which is a buffered interface between a CAN-bus and a USB-port. Peak-systems are also offering an obfuscated-source driver (see driver-page).

The next step is a difficult one for me: I'll have to connect microcontrollers to a CAN-bus (and to sensors and actors of course).

So far I tried an Infineon-C167, which was at hand. I gave up, because there is no properly documented gcc-backend.

I'll have to try Atmel AVR next. It seems to have a strong developer-base. So I feel safer to go in this direction.

I've so far set up a Mini-ITX computer, which is (appart from an external power-supply at the moment) already fully self-sufficient. One can communicate with the Mini-ITX PC by wireless network. Here's the detailed documentation: documentation

Using CANBus and micro-controllers in the future, it should be possible to build a robot with Onboard-PC for less than 1000 Euros!

CANBus is used in professional applications (cars, industrial robots). F.e. see Kurt2 project.