Let's start an official ArduRover project

Inspired by John Arne's post, I got a Redcat Rockslide, which is totally cool and a great robotics platform. As you can see, it's really easy to add a mounting platform for electronics (that's APM with GPS and Xbee mounted above) and there's LOADS of room. You could even have it carry a laptop if you wanted. BTW, that's the 1/8 size Redcat shown above, which is $236. I think the 1/10 size Redcat would probably be just as good for most uses, and it's just $159. [Update: the 1:10 isn't big enough. See this comparison]

I've registered the ArduRover name, and am now just looking for the best starting point to modify the APM code for ground rovers. Since James Goppert is part of the APM dev team, we'll probably start with his rover code, which you can see at work here. But if others have code or sensor additions to the basic APM set that would be good to add to a rover, this is the place to discuss and share.

Ideally, we'll get this done in time for the Sparkfun AVC contest, on the hope that APM can have a decent chance of placing in all of the categories--ground, plane and quad. Which would be awesome.

You need to be a member of diydrones to add comments!

Join diydrones

Comments

Developer

John Arne Birkeland February 1, 2011 at 12:57pm

Chris: Regarding the Sparkfun challenge and speed. Have you seen this one?

http://hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/uh_viewItem.asp?idProduct=16645

The picture showing the frame, looks promising for mounting a plate with electronics on top.
Developer

John Arne Birkeland February 1, 2011 at 12:04pm

There is plenty of more or less standard small form factor computers that will run Windows/Linux out of the box.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_form_factor
Brad Smith February 1, 2011 at 10:40am

@TD well you wont have to worry about it falling out of the sky ,,,but you might have to watch a car pull up and drive it away.

@johann there are a lot of pitfalls to off road navigation lots of decisions . I was looking at using the UAV as a sattelite

uplink downlink to my UGV so i could stay in control , my platform will turn itself back over and it will have a arm to untangle the grape vines !!!
3D Robotics

Chris Anderson February 1, 2011 at 9:35am

Jim, the Kinect has been ported to a few embedded platforms, such as the Beagleboard. See this post for more.

Beagle has 3 eyes - Kinect + Beagleboard

People have hooked up the Kinect to a few embedded platforms - Intel Atom and Gumstix Overo have come up. It was time for the other darlin...
Jim February 1, 2011 at 7:13am

Nice vid, but how can we get rid of the laptop? has anyone looked at any options for making a Kinect wireless? Jim
Mike February 1, 2011 at 6:59am

Rover: Autonomous Kinect Navigation video
Jim February 1, 2011 at 3:54am

This is something I've been working on too! Although I'm using a straight Arduino right now, I may re-purpose my ardupilot for this job if get round to buying an APM. http://jimblackhurst.com/wiki/index.php/Autonomous_Ground_Vehicle
Chip January 31, 2011 at 8:02pm

I'm using an Associated B3 1/10th scale buggy for my rover and an original ArduPilot. I started with the "ArduPilot goes into the water" code and worked from there. I've added a compass to provide for a more accurate heading and it works great (wish I could afford the tilt-compensated one though). I'm currently working on adding three Sharp GP2Y0A710YK IR sensors with 18ft of range for obstacle detection. Any way I can help?

For speed.. I'm using a Traxxas Velineon brushless system.. I've tested it at about 40mph on a 9.8v battery, WAYYY too fast for autonomous control.
Jacob January 31, 2011 at 10:57am

Would be nice if the project supported differentiel drive vehicles. Should be a matter of coding i guess
Mike January 31, 2011 at 9:47am

regarding ROS, Navigation, Mapping . . . suggest using gmapping map building (SLAM) software most commonly used in ROS. Then, build dataset of Sparkfun building.

of 10

This reply was deleted.