Sparkfun AVC 2011: RC Truck

I had some birthday money burning a hole in my pocket and I've been thinking about the Sparkfun Autonomous Vehicle Contest too much lately.

I bought an budget-friendly, entry-level 1:10 RC truck.  An ElectrixRC Circuit.

I guess I'm going to go ahead and do this AVC thing. There's a long to do list. Let's see here...

• Interface Arduino MCU to RC truck (done)
• Research truck's handling limits* (in progress)
• Collect acceleration data (in progress)
• Devise Electronic Stability Control algorithms
• Setup Android coding environment
• Ramp up on Android coding
• Explore using Android phone for navigation
• Arduino to Android interface (bluetooth?)
• Devise curb & object detection mechanism -- vision? laser? lidar?

Since Sparkfun hasn't actually announced the 2011 contest yet, I'm not sure how much time I have left but I'll assume it's happening around tax time again.  In fact, there's no guarantee the AVC will happen at all but I'm hopeful based on a comment on their website by an employee:

Although we haven't made any official AVC 2011 announcement (and this isn't one either), everybody around the office is assuming that AVC will continue every year into the indefinite future. It's just too much fun not to do it! Trevor

What I've learned so far about using my phone is that it lacks gyros, kind of a big deal I fear.  It makes the interface with the Arduino a little messier than I'd prefer.

Pic from Sparkfun.com

The 1-axis gyros I ordered from Sparkfun arrived, so I will most likely let the Arduino handle IMU interfacing, and have the phone manage the high level GPS and compass navigation.

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* Yes, of course I'm going to get to play with the truck! Duh!

Thompson Robotics Expo

Pokey has been on loan to George of SHARC who took the robot to the Thompson Robotics Expo in Loveland last weekend.

The expo featured two robotics competitions. Of the 60 teams from the Thompson School District in Loveland, 22 teams competed to go to the VEX World Championship in Orlando, Florida while another 38 teams competed in a FIRST Lego League qualifier.

The event also showcased exhibits from the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, a robot mannequin simulator from Banner Health, MATE underwater robots, a robotic dog from Road Narrows, an Antartica underwater robot simulator, a demonstration of Thompson Valley's and Loveland High's FIRST Robotics Challenge robots, BEST robotics competition demo, and of course the SHARC firefighting demo with several robots, including Pokey.

George sent me an email a few days before the expo. With the motivation of an event deadline I got busy, reassembled the robot and thrashed on the code to add a number of enhancements.

Though still without a working fan motor driver, and lacking any kind of maze navigation code (bluetooth remote control only) Pokey's working better than ever and I'm told he performed well for the kids. Cool.

Pokey navigating the upper right corner of the maze. (Pic by George Mitsuoka)

Android (Phone) Robot for Robomagellan

As of a couple weeks ago, I've entered the new millenium with the purchase of an Android phone, an LG Ally (pic from intomobile.com).

Though I'm notoriously a Mac guy and most of my friends expected me to get an iPhone, my blogs, pictures, email, calendar, etc., are all hosted on Google.

And I was drawn to it because it's programmable in Java. On the other hand, programming the iPhone... well, let's just say that Robotgrrl successfully scared the bejeepers out of me in one of her blog entries with such quotes as:

If you’re ever looking for a challenge worth pulling your teeth out, making an iPhone App is a great place to start. 

and

The language, the concepts, everything is completely different from what is seen in languages like Java and C++.

Um, no thanks. Not that I'm a Java master, or anything. I'm a newb (and how many people are truly masters with an API that big anyway?).  But at least I'd be facing a learning curve instead of a learning cliff equipped with pillboxes and landmines. So Android was the obvious choice all around.

I got to thinking, gee, this thing has a GPS, a compass, and a 3-axis accelerometer, all the stuff that would cost me a couple hundred bucks to add to a scratch-built robomagellan robot.

That is, if I were to follow my dream of entering the Sparkfun Autonomous Vehicle Contest in 2011. Or any other robomagellan-esque challenge at any time in the near future.

So instead of a scratch-built robomagellan robot, why not an Android brain with the navigation smarts coded in, sitting atop some cheap RC chassis equipped with an Arduino brain stem, and some simple comm code on both ends for control.

That has to be easier and better than trying to do all this with 8-bit, 16MHz microcontrollers and C, right? I'd say so. Did I mention that OpenCV has been ported to Android?

Here's a great PDF write-up on the topic of Androids for robotics and robomagellan.