RobotBox is a community for robot builders to show off their projects. Add yours today.
Syndicate
Builder Info
Build Log
-
03/20/10
-
04/12/10
-
10/27/10
Builder's Other Projects
Activity
Pokey
Tags:
Category:
Rolling
Progress: Completed
Cost: 150.00
Time to Build: 2 months
Pokey is a differential drive robot originally built to compete in the Ft. Collins, CO Robot Firefighting Challenge in March, 2008 but was also built to be versatile and expandable. So while the little fella is complete, he'll be refitted for new missions in the future.
He was originally equipped with an Orangutan LV168 controller, dual Sharp IR rangers on a custom built aluminum array rotated by servo, dual Lynxmotion floor sensors, and a Tamiya Double Gearbox drivetrain. Powered by 3 AA NiMH batteries, the robot senses flames with a pair of IR LEDs acting as photodiodes, amplified by a large flashlight reflector pointing in reverse (to facilitate easier navigation). Flame quenching (per rules) is an electric motor driving a plastic RC propeller.
The chassis is made of 1/4" plywood bases and poplar posts and painted bright red. The top deck where the flame detector and of the 3-tier robot is intended for mission-specific equipment like the IR detector and fire suppression propeller.
Working without encoders, Pokey's C software was designed to detect Firefighting maze walls, edges, intersections, and make constant radius turns to navigate. Unfortunately this didn't really work all that reliably. But, the little bot is quite fast, at least.
Pokey appeared along with his competitors in Robot magazine after the big event. He lost. :(
Videos:
Related Projects
Recent comments
- Electronics has gone from
27 weeks 5 days ago - Hi,
Nice design, very
28 weeks 2 days ago - That's a difficult
29 weeks 2 days ago - I like your ideas of robot
29 weeks 3 days ago - That's pretty much how
29 weeks 3 days ago - Personally I feel a word's
29 weeks 3 days ago - I used very very small pager
30 weeks 5 days ago - I used very very small pager
30 weeks 5 days ago - This was one of the very few
31 weeks 3 days ago - Another great nano! Saw this
31 weeks 3 days ago
Recent blog posts
- Bionic Parts And Assembly Lines
- A New Frontier
- Robot Vacuum Cleaners
- Crazy About Lego?
- NXT 2.0 Mindstorms Is The Best Robot for Beginner - Must Have!
- Joining Robot Clubs
- US-020 ultrasonic sensor distance measuring module
- A few explanation about the Arduino
- Hobbymate FBL 3-Axis Gyro 3 axis Flybarless Rc Helicopter Gyro MEMS
- Building Robotics out of Cardboard
Comments
Pokey is now sporting a fresh
Pokey is now sporting a fresh paint job (firefighting red of course).
The vision system is now able to lock onto bright objects (candle flames), and I built a pcb for the vision subsystem. Still working on the TWI (I2C) interface.
Putting that on hold and reworking the wall following from scratch since that was the other biggest problem last time. Lots of parts incl. gyro on the way from Sparkfun. :)
I guess I will create a Pokey II project in a little while.
Very cool and compact robot!
Very cool and compact robot! Participating in a competition looks like it would be a blast!
Thanks! It's more fun if
Thanks! It's more fun if your robot doesn't smash into walls instead of completing its mission :) :) :)
There is talk of another firefighting competition this year... so revisions to Pokey are in the works...
"fun" story: I built a
"fun" story: I built a fire-fighter robot. I spent months on the thing, and it was working pretty well. I drove all the way to CT for the official Fire Fighting contest at Heartford, CT. Testing went well, and the Atomic Firebot did excellent during trial runs.
However, for all three of the judged runs, the robot freaked out and ran into the walls.
Those little buggers know more than we think they do ...
Nice work on Pokey. My first
Nice work on Pokey. My first robot was also a fire-fighter. How well did the IR LEDs work out for finding the flame? Were they confused by ceiling lights or video cameras?
Thanks! The IR LEDs enclosed
Thanks! The IR LEDs enclosed in the flashlight reflector actually did fairly well. No issues from video cameras that I had available to test. Ceiling lights didn't seem to be a problem as the reflector restricted field of view. I set up the reflector so that it would be maximally sensitive to light in the same height range as the regulation candle height. The big problem I had was that I'd calibrated it with a window in view at home, but the shades were closed in the competition so the thresholds were off -- and the detection code was pretty unsophisticated. Maybe with a little more refinement ...