Amazing 6WD Off-Road Robot | Arduino RC Robot

Hey guys, hope you all saw the demo of our latest Arduino off-road robot, cool right? Now let us take a look at the components used one by one. In this post, I will be showing you how I built this wireless surveillance robot: Robotin-6.

I will give you the complete schematics, codes and complete layout of all the boards used in this Arduino RC robot to make one yourself. So stay tuned!

About our Sponsor

This Project is Sponsored by WIN SOURCE. WIN SOURCE is a leading electronic components supplier from China.

Arduino Off-Road Robot Demo

First let us take a look at our Arduino off-road robot and how it performs on rough terrain.

Looks cool right? Now let us take a look at the components used one by one.

Guys, One more thing before starting the assembly of the Arduino RC robot. If you like this video and find this video useful, please do support our channel by liking this video and subscribe to our channel by clicking the subscribe button below. I would really appreciate it. We will be making and uploading demos and tutorials of more Arduino RC robots in the future.

Learn Arduino the Easy Way

Are you new to Arduino? Do you want to improve your skills in Arduino programming? You are in the right place. We have a complete beginner-level tutorial for Arduino which covers everything from scratch.

In this free Arduino Tutorial for Beginners guide, we will be taking a look at Introduction to Arduino Platform, Getting Started with Arduino IDE, Different Types of Arduino Boards, Arduino

6-Wheel Drive Rough Terrain Robot Chassis

The whole off-road robot chassis is built using 2 mm aluminum alloy and the surface is coated with aluminum. Even though the material is lightweight, it is very strong and can carry all the; components - microcontroller, sensors and motors without any hassle.

Get this amazing 6WD robot chassis now.

It has 6 high-speed DC motors, with an RPM of 17,000 combined with 1:34 full metal gearbox, enabling your 6-wheeled robot to obtain amazing speed and off-road performance. The use of six hydraulic spring dampers ensure adaptive driving experience even on rough terrains and uneven surfaces.

Arduino Off-Road Robot Components

• Robot Chassis
• Arduino Pro Mini
• HC12
• Remote Controller
• VNH2SP30 Motor Driver
• LiPo Battery

Making Arduino RC Robot

HC12

Here, we will be using HC 12 wireless module for transmitting data from the DIY Remote Controller to the RC Robot. They are commonly used in remote controlled robots and other wireless communication projects. This wireless module works under 433 megahertz frequency. When combined with an external antenna, this wireless module can transmit and receive data from a distance of up to 1 Kilometer line of sight and due to this reason we will be using this wireless module for our robot.

This wireless module can be easily connected to arduino or Raspberry Pi, and start using it for your project right away. Another advantage of using HC12 wireless module for your RC robot is, this module requires only two pins – TX and RX, for data transfer. You can save the rest of the pins of your arduino or Raspberry Pi for other things.

High current Motor Driver

As I mentioned earlier this robot chassis have 6 high speed DC Motors with a speed of 17000 RPM combined with 1:34 metal gear box. Each motor draws a current of about 350 milli ampere. As you might know, for almost all of my Robots, I use either L293D motor driver or L298N motor driver.

Here also I tried L293D and L298N Piggybacked. Even though it worked fine, too much energy was wasted as heat after 5 minutes of continuous usage.

So I decided to go for another high current motor driver, named VNH2SP30, that can provide a peak current of 30 amperes.

If you are not familiar with this VNH2SP30 High Current DC Motor Driver, please click this link you know more about it.

This motor driver board can control only one motor at a time. So here we will be using two motor driver boards to control both DC motors.

Why not make a PCB for your Project?

Making a PCB for your DIY project is not hard nowadays. PCB helps to get rid of all messy wires and stuff and gives your project an awesome look. And it’s cool to make your own PCB for your project right?

Design your own PCBs for your Project!

I used Altium designer to draw the circuit and design the PCB. It is a powerful tool that can be used to design and create our own PCBs for our project as well as complex and multi-layer PCBs for industrial use.

If you are a DIY Electronic enthusiast, I bet this is gonna be really useful for you guys. I have been using it for the past 3-4 years and let me tell you guys, this is amazing! You can download the Free Trial of Altium PCB Designer from here.

PCB Design Tutorial using Altium

Check out the below video to start designing your own PCBs in Minutes!

Powering up the Off Road Robot

For this project I’ll be using a 12 volt Lithium polymer battery as a power source. This can provide enough power to drive all the six DC Motors, power up the arduino, HC12 module and the motor drivers without any issues.

That's all you need to know about all the components used in this off road RC robot. started with making the robot.

Want to make one yourself? Complete code and circuit are available here.

Robotin-6 Complete Tutorial

Testing

Once the code is uploaded you can power up the entire robot put it on the floor and try moving the joystick. Its fun right?

That’s it guys. Have fun. Play with it.