HexaTron MK3

HexaTron is a semi-autonomous teleoperated robot, built to traverse rough terrain. This means that I control it and steer it through the terrain, but it is capable of avoiding obstacles and adjusting its course without human intervention.
It detects obstacles by means of a SONAR and two optic sensors mounted in the front legs, connected to the body with optic fibers. It has built in speech synthesis to interact with people in its surroundings.
I control HexaTron from my PC, via a program I've written in Visual Basic. It displays the picture from the onboard camera, a graph of what the sonar sees, a command console and sensor/hardware status.
I can also adjust leg positions and walking parameters from an LCD panel located on the back of the robot. These are then stored in eeprom.

Since HexaTron is a teleoperated robot, it has a 1296MHz ATV video link to send video from a color camera to my PC via a video capture card. Commands and status feedback is sent through a duplex radio link at 57600bps. HexaTron was built primarily to experiment with different aspects of robotics and telecommand. However i recently added a soft airgun mechanism with laser sight that shoots plastic bullets. I then sit in front of my PC, and control hexaTron with a joystick, walking around in my home and shooting at targets I've set up.
This beats every video game there is!

I've been working on HexaTron every now and then for about one and a half year, and it has undergone two major revisions.