Great links! I missed watching that show, haha
I'll try getting links to safety/rescue/recon robots. I came across some before.. even those that have very similar objectives to ours, eg university student research, etc..
Locomotion
Regarding the motor.. I think a 1/2 HP motor is too powerful for a single wheel!
Probably a standard 12VDC (with gearing) is good enough. We don't want to carry too many batteries for the robot. The lead acid ones are quite heavy. Your getting too influenced by those combat robots
For some calcuations, one can use this:
How to Build a Robot Tutorial - Society of Robots
Communications
I found these links for a potential antenna designs for a 802.11 (2.4GHz) wireless modules:
1)
2.4Ghz Vertical Collinear Antenna for 802.11 Applications - WardrivingOnline.com
2)
Can with conical horn - WardrivingOnline.com
3)
Omni-directional "spider omni" antenna 2.4 GHz for 802.11b (WiFi) WLAN
4)
iTrike: The World's First Solar-Powered Internet Rickshaw! (practical implementation of spider-omni directional).
I'll try getting polar charts for them. These designs are quite easy to fabricate. Probably the hardest thing is to integrate the N-type connectors to the WLAN modules (eg USB type). Thats what "hacking" is for!
If we choose a directional type, we'd have to figure out a way to rotate it to point towards the other wireless module automatically. As I mentioned in previous post, we can implement xhx's optical sensor idea as a compass.
The reason I'm staying away from Low powered RF Modems for
data (note: not remote control) transfer is their steep costs... perhaps $200-$300 a piece. Maybe when we get sponsors, we can purchase them (their baud rates are quite good)
Besides, I want to do the testing soon. I can probably build an 2.4Ghz antenna next month or so after I do some initial testing between two computers. Thats probably the only part of the robot subsystem I can test at the moment.. the locomotion system is probably out of my grasp (unless I borrow some wheels, DC motors and a drive chain from the Robotics lab at uni, and fabricate the ackerman steering column. Fat chance!
).
CEans, please do try out any ideas here if you have access to tools and materials. We need to get as many experimental data as possible
Flowcharts
I'll draw a simple block diagram for the whole CE Bot later on Thursday night. That should give us an idea about why modular designs are useful