In between aircraft I built this rover. It is a Traxxas Slash frame with a piece of 1/8" aircraft plywood on top for an electronics platform. The plywood measures 16.5" x 6.5". It was super easy to build. In the next few days I will finish configuring the electronics, update and confirgure the software and test it out. If anybody has any related tips or experiences they would like to share I would be happy to hear them. I will post updates when I have it running.
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g'day guys, here's my rock crawler that is being set up for auto pilot control. I've ordered the new APM2 from DIYdrones and will need to start picking peoples brains for help. :) I've got the older version of the APM and it's setup in the Bixler pilot seat type unit. I've test run it and reckon it's a great way to mix and match the auto pilot system from one beast to another.
Some of the bits on the crawler are a set of cycle lights for night time, a wireless pan/tilt camera. The wireless transmitter is on the side with the rubber ducky aerial. This is picked up by a FatShark set of goggles. Really puts you in the drivers seat. The camera is controlled by the remote control system. The good thing about a rover is the extra channels you have to play with. You can also hang heaps of extras off of it. I'm working on an articulated arm from the back to the front with inbuilt camera and light. The style is like the ones from Lynxmotion dot com and will be capable of moving to any point on the ground around the rover. The power comes from two 5.2amp 7.4Volt LiPo batteries in parallel so she maybe slow but just goes and goes and goes.....
clear skies
@duc looks like u have gone quite a way ;) btw is ur project ( rest of it) open sourced, if so would be curious to have a peek at the code
@Adam: Hehe. Citrus spray at least removes the poo smell after cleaning so you can take the rover indoors again. :) Haven't bothered with posting more videos. I figured hours of a rover slowly crawling around my neighborhood exploring would hardly be interesting for anyone but me..
@Duc Phuc Tran, Very cool. I think you are ahead of all of us. Are you saying that you are going to fire missles at your rover??? I look forward to hearing more about your project when you have time.
@John Arne Birkeland, you are so right about just having fun with this stuff, I had a blast driving the rover around outside while I sat in the living room watching the world go by on my TV. I had about a 200' range on both the video link and the stock traxxas radio, that was with walls and trees in the way.
John: Yes, I think it probably would make sense to bring make the ArduRover code a branch of the current ArduPlane code. As it is, the ArduRover is based on a different architecture (the experimental ArduPilotOne), which makes it hard to maintain.
My sense is that rovers, while superficially similar to the 2D side of aircraft navigation, are actually quite a bit different. Although they don't need stabilization code, they need much better dead reckoning code to compensate for the fine-grained issues with GPS data. You need lots of smoothing, extrapolation and possibly more sensors, such as wheel encoders or optical flow sensors, to measure precise motion.
It would be a fun exercise, however, and I'd be happy to work with any team that wants to try this port.
@Anish @Robert @Chris, etc. I wonder if it would be easier to modify the already up to date airplane code to work with a rover or bring the existing rover code up to date?
@Dave and @Dez Socks, It seems like a lot of us are thinking about rovers. I have not had any issues at all, heat or otherwise with the Traxxas chassis, it seems almost indestructable. Knock on wood.
@TClll, Good to hear you are working on one too. Care to say more about the subsumption process? Thanks for the links. Good luck with your move.
@Anis, yes I am sure it will return to home. Sonar is one possible sensor we could use.
@Earl, I agree it could be used for testing after the code gets updated.
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