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Stair-climbing Robot Built From R/C Car Parts
dpa writes "The ability to
climb and descend stairs (5M mpg) is one of the unexpected behaviors of this new home-brew
off-road autonomous robot platform. The robot has a custom chassis and uses standard suspension and drive components scavanged from old R/C monster trucks. Here is a
link to the build log, and here is a
link to a hi-res version of the video (20M mpg)."
This is *not* a remote control vehicle.
Although this robot is built from remote-control car parts, it is fully autonomous using a Motorola 'brain' and inertial navigation. It also includes ultrasonic object avoidance detectors.
I think you'd be fairly hard-pushed to find an 'off the shelf' vehicle that could do that autonomously over reasonably rough terrian.
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
thanks! Ah most observant Dunbal! You are correct. The posted video is spliced together from two different runs, one up and one down. It was about a 12 foot dropoff, and I was so busy looking at the video camera that I only grabbed it at the very last second before it plunged to its destruction. I think that little robot still needs his Daddy nearby for a while longer... It did a lot better offroad in the woods, like this video (10M) and also this one (22M).
Triwheel designs do this much better (they had one in the Robot Builder's Bonanza book, which is a great read); they can go up 45 degree steps. They work by having three smaller wheels arranged into a single triangular "wheel," with only two in contact when on flat ground. When they encounter stairs, they just simply flip and go over the stairs. I think Lockheed or some company like that had a patent on the design, although it may be close to expiring. A full scale vehicle with the design was used in a Hollywood movie.
Did you RTFA? From the webpage, *FIRST* paragraph:
"this is an autonomous robot. That means it drives itself. It is not
a radio controlled vehicle. The radio antennae you see in the pictures are for an emergency
shutoff, required by the rules of some robot contests. The robot is navigating using wheel
odometery and an inertial measurement unit (IMU). It does obstacle avoidance using a 4-element
sonar array. No one is driving the robot: it drives itself."
I noticed the paragraph is addressed directly to slashdotters. The author obviously doesn't know that slashdotters don't read. We just look at the pictures.