Its Friday Night at 11PM. The basements of normal fraternities are filled with libations and attractive women.
AEPi at Carnegie Mellon marches to the beat of a different drummer. You know, that drummer in marching band, who is really nice and quiet but kind of smells weird. Yeah. That guy.
The boys of AEPi decided that Friday night would be a perfect opportunity to whip out the power tools and begin exploring the depths of RoboBuggy.
Mike Zankel and Brandon Sherman took lead of this endeavor.
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| Mike Zankel is in the stripes, Brando is in the light blue, and Nate is hunched over |
Nate and Alex watched in horror as Brando took an angle grinder to the rusted bolts in order to free the brains of the RoboBuggy.
After 3 hours of work, when the sparks and debris settled, the ancient brains of the RoboBuggy were unearthed.
Here is the full Inventory List:
1 – 150MB Flash Hard Drive and Ribbon
1 – Magnetic Compass
1 – Unkown home made relay component
1- Intel motherboard
1 – 12V 18A*Hr Lead Acid Battery
1 – 12V Computer Power Supply
1 – VGA Adapter
1 – 25 pin to ethernet and 4 pin adapter
1 – Optical Encoder
1 – Enormous Seiko Servo for the front wheel
1 – Pneumatic Braking System
1 – 6mm Color Camera
1 – Video Transmitter
1 – Logitech Wireless Mouse Adapter
2 – 37 pin input boards labeled CTR #1 and 2
1 – Cigarette Lighter Adapter and Power Panel
1 – 8 Channel RF Reciever
3 – CIA Buggy Wheels
1 – Steel Push Bar
- Assorted RF, Ethernet and Power Wires
Here is a picture of the home made relay component we found. If any of our loyal readers have any ideas what this is, please comment.
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| ??? |
The final result:
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| RoboBuggy ain't go no smarts no more |
The Next Steps:
1. The two components that we are focusing on right now are the laser gyroscope and the optical encoder. Nate is currently playing with them in order to figure out their basic function.
2. We're also trying to figure out how to mount a camera to our normal buggies in order to get data during rolls. We're trying to find a camera that is cheap but would provide usable data, so we're looking for one that will be very close to the cameras we'll be using on the real deal.
Although we're planning on rolling RoboBuggy in exhibitions during this year's races, we want to make this buggy adhere to all the rules of a normal buggy. Our goal is to make RoboBuggy a competitve buggy in the near future.
Here is the complete rulebook that I found online from 2009:
One idea to increase the buggy's vision signals is to provide extra flaggers around the course that will help tell RoboBuggy where it is. This is within the rules (see the last paragraph of section 8.1.3).
A downside to adhering to the rules is that we would like to put a GPS unit in the buggy. This is a problem because section 10.5.2 under "Buggies" state that the driver can't have any communication to the outside world that isn't already accessible to them, and it specifically states that telemetry units are prohibited. Now although a lot of our other components may provide a little bit of haze within the rules, we can make the argument that we're simply mimicking all the senses of the driver, IE sight, speed and direction. Unless Sweepstakes says otherwise, we will need to figure out what we want to do with the GPS, as it can be incredibly helpful.
In addition, if you would like to learn more about RoboBuggy, simply see the project, or learn about regular buggies, feel free to either email me at alexklarfeld@gmail.com or simply stop by AEPi! We don't mind sharing our buggy "secrets" with interested parties.
-Alex
