roborace

[shobhan03]

hello there,
i am to make a vehicle for a roborace event,that has to pass through a certain terrain on the track for eg. small pebbles, a small inclination and through a water segment which is not deep, just the wheels would get wet. so my question is , what according to you should be the approach to build such automated vehicle? what type of circuit should i be going for? what kind of motors to be used? what kind of wheels to be taken? should it be caterpillar type? this vehicle can be controlled by RC which is wired. also do consider the economy factor while giving your suggestions.
thanks..

 

[Vizier87]

What do you have right now? You need a team to build one for an event. If specified into electronics and programming, start with this page: winpicprog.co.uk for basics on microcontrollers. They'll help you gain an insight on the difficult parts, you can figure out the mechanics yourself.

 

[shobhan03]

yes i have a team of 4 people. do i really need to get into micro controllers? i had a discussion with my group members. i will tell u what we decided. we are thinking of four 6-12v 350 rpm dc motors coupled to a belt drive, such as we have in military tanks. so this would be good for the pebbles that are there in the track. moreover since we have to place the ball from the sand and put it in particular hole, we were thinking to make tong kinda of thing coulped to a low rpm of lets say 30rpm motor.
what do u have to say on this Vizier87?

 

[Vizier87]

For tracks, here is a good page:
Track Systems - 28 June 2008

If you are just controlling the motors for ON/OFF apps without speed control, you won't need microcontrollers, you can buy encoders and decoders to control electronic H-bridges (like L293 or something similar).
Encoders/decoders for Radio Control are cheap, like PT2262 and PT2272, and you can use 315 Mhz or 418 Mhz license-free radio-frequency modules.

Google for the parts I mentioned, download the datasheet, read them thoroughly and come back.

 

[shobhan03]

i will see the track page that you mentioned. we dont have to put in the RF part since we are free to make a wired vehicle. and yes there is speed control on the curves , so what we were thinking is ON/OFF of the motors alternately so as to take turns, hope that would work. i hope my idea got conveyed.

 

[Vizier87]

speed control using on-off mechanically ain't gonna work. See the concept on Pulse-width-modulation and download the datasheet of a 555 timer to implement it into an electronic H-Bridge like L293 to drive the motors.

 

[shobhan03]

ok i will check out...