Ultrasonic proximity sensor IR analog ranger IR proximity sensor PIR sensor IR sensor Micro switches for ring bumper
2 Globe gear box motors 1 R/C servo Fan
Control Method
Power Source
Autonomous
Battery
CPU Type
Operating System
PIC Microcontroller
None
Programming Lanuage
Weight
Assembly
N/A
Time to build
Cost to build
about a month
maybe $100
URL for more information
N/A
Comments
All PC board and robot structure made on home made CNC. Cost? maybe $100, lots of the stuff was junk parts or scrap materials. I took about a month to build and program the bot.
Fritz is the name of my fire fighting robot. He was originally created as a general purpose robot and then heavily modified to compete in the Trinity Fire Fighting contest.
He is a classic cylindrical robot using 2 globe gear box motors for differential steering and propulsion. Motor control is via a derivative of the Dallas Personal Robotics Society's PC board design using the L298 dual H-bridge chip.
All the other PC boards are my own design and are produced by mechanically cutting the circuit traces via a home made CNC. Also all the plastic parts of the robot are also CNC cut.
The robot has a total of four micro controllers. One PIC 16F877 as the main processor. One PIC 16F628 for the IR proximity sensors, they view through the slot in the sheet metal shell. Two PIC 16F84 drive a 4X4 key board and a LCD.
The robot uses a hobby servo to raster many of the sensors and a couple of fans to help detect walls, and lit candles.
The sensors for navigation are ultra sonic, IR ranger, IR proximity's.
A PIR heat sensor, a simple IR sensor and a cad sulphide cell for detecting the candle flame.
In practice the robot did a excellent job in wandering about my house looking for a lit candle and extinguishing it. However my code used a wall avoiding system, which worked great in wide open areas. However in the very tight confines of the simulated house it developed "Claustrophobia" and had nothing but trouble avoiding the walls. If I use this robot next time I be sure to change the code to have the robot want to follow walls.
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