The purpose of the rover project is to provide myself with a testbed for random ideas. I hope to explore autonomous behavior as well as swarm theory down the road when I can make a few more. Initial work will focus on sensing the environment and navigation. Pictures can be found on my Picasa account under Projects

I'm initially interested in low cost sensors such as IR. The cost of course is appealing, but using very simple sensors and simple interaction with the environment can still result in complex behaviors. I would like to avoid at all costs the current methods that use absolute positions and environment maps for interaction. My end goal is to have learning algorithms and neural networks either implemented in FPGAs or on a PC that use the robot as a way to interact with the physical environment.

NEW: Here are some videos of the robot messing around in my living room. I was controlling it from my computer with some really horrible program I hacked together. But hey... it works!

I'm beginning to document the project so here are some schematics from the rover. Its really very simple and straightforward. Promise.

The brains of the robot. This stuff is contained on the top board of the robot. Powered by 1x9V.

The motor driver (there are two on the robot, one for each motor). This stuff is on the bottom board. Powered by 4x1.2V 2500mAh NiMH.