My Current Project

Every March, Penn State (Albington campus) hosts a robotics competition called the mini grand challenge. Similar to the real Darpa Grand Challenge, robots must autonomously navigate through a series of waypoints using GPS and visual navigation. The difference is, Penn State course is about half a mile, Darpa's was > than 100 miles. For the 2008 competition, I plan on competing with my robot, SubZero. It's is no where near completion, but it shouldn't be a problem to finish before March 08. It has roughly 3hp worth of motors and weights aout 100 pounds so far. This week I finished of the two H-bridges used for motor control. Because they are relay based, I still have to add some FETS for PWM. Just for the heck of it, I made a simple radio controller based off an aircraft radio (hope the FCC isn't reading this, lol). It's about as low-tech as you can get. For each side, I have a servo pushing a button for full forward or full reverse. This gives me ultra-fast acceleration and quite jerky tractor steering. Other than stripping a few set screws, this hasn't damaged the drive-train so far. As soon as I get a chance, I'll post a video of it in action. Link