Open Automation Project

[UIDzero]

"Have you ever dreamed of building your own Linux-based droid [that could] roam around your home autonomously, intelligently obeying your commands?" asks Dafydd Walters. "You may now be able to finally fulfill your dream." Walters founded and leads the Open Automaton Project (OAP), which aims to help enthusiasts assemble an intelligent mobile robot with stereo vision and state-of-the-art PC mainboard technology -- for about the cost of a good PC.


The purpose of this project is to engineer modular software and electronic components, from which it is possible to assemble an intelligent PC-based mobile robot suitable for home or office environments. *note* this is not my project, just pointing it out cause I thought it was cool.

[GregTheGreat]

Wow this is cool. I see the "eyes" trackers on the bottom, are those mounted on every side?

-Greg The Great

[miketwalker]

Wow, that's really cool... from what I see, if you purchased the circuit boards and sensors and all, you could probably build all of that for relatively cheap if you used old robotics parts, and it seems like a really good project to work on just to learn things... I subscribed to the mailing list... I'd recommend for others to check that site out and look around, everything is open-source which is really cool so you can see exactly how they designed and built it.

[GregTheGreat]

Originally posted by miketwalker
Wow, that's really cool... from what I see, if you purchased the circuit boards and sensors and all, you could probably build all of that for relatively cheap if you used old robotics parts, and it seems like a really good project to work on just to learn things... I subscribed to the mailing list... I'd recommend for others to check that site out and look around, everything is open-source which is really cool so you can see exactly how they designed and built it.

I seen something similer to this at the Purdue Cal Campus, it had a nice detection rate from the sensors, they worked well, the program was very complex however. The automation would be tuff. The overall design can probabally be done using a basic stamp, maybe some one will try building one in FIRST. It sound like a fun project, I don't think it would be that hard.

-Greg The Great

[Rich Wong]

Wow, great...

is that a laptop on the 2nd shelf?
and analog circuit board and battery on the bottom shelf?
and acoustic sensors for front, left side and right side?
oh... a wireless antenna on the back of the top shelf?

Way cool.....
I hope you bring it to the 2004 regional for show & tell!


(never mind the guessing ... I go to the link)

[miketwalker]

Rich....

Originally posted by UIDzero
*note* this is not my project, just pointing it out cause I thought it was cool.

[Sachiel7]

Those eye's are ultrasonic sensors. We actually had a plan to use those on our bot this year. We planned on building a small 2 axis scanner w/ servos and have 2 ultrasonics mounted on top. This would pivot around, scanning the distance of it's pings (think of a bat) and we actually had a 3D program running on our laptop that read the feedback from the robot and generated It's position within the field, and put up little "Walls" where it had gotten feedback from a solid object. I wish we'd gotten further with the project. This would have been a great way for the drivers to "see" past the ramp and ramp stacks.
Anyway, it looks real cool. This kind of technology is still kinda new on the Open end. Looks neat.

[Rich Wong]

Originally posted by miketwalker
Rich....

(must go home and get sleep now)