What's the big idea?
The development of new technologies often coalesce into industry wide standards that begin from a single, simple idea. While this process may take some time to complete, there are very few technologies that having split into separate paths during development that did not eventually unite under a single standard. Standardization of components not only makes them interchangeable, but allows for more specialization of each component. Without standardization we would need to know what manufacturer made our light fixtures in order to purchase light bulbs, each would have different shapes and voltages.
In the development of robots that are destined to share our living spaces, the ability to adapt to environments designed for human occupation will be a critical skill. Navigation around furnishings and objects in a house requires the ability to adapt to an ever changing environment, those preprogrammed routes used by robots in industrial situations where the environment remains static are no longer sufficient. A child's shoe, school bag, or a discarded toy are a simple obstacle for a human to avoid but could become insurmountable for a device designed to follow programmed paths without environmental awareness.
My robot ate my homework...
KD2 is a mobile platform designed to facilitate the development of a standardized navigation and movement protocol. Dedicating the processing power of the Kinetis MCU on the FRDM-K82F to control movement and analyze sensor input adds flexibility to test multiple sensor configurations.
I wanted a stable physical platform that offered expandability and can be easily modified, I chose the Actobotics precision building system from Servocity. The components are made to work together and are easy to assemble, I had the whole basic robot frame put together in a couple of hours.
I chose a large rechargeable battery (15600 mAh) in order to drive the wheels, the K82F board, and eventually another board that will be the 'brains' of the robot. The heavy battery close to the center of gravity will provide momentum and help the robot maintain it's balance. The finished platform will be able to navigate and maintain it's balance while avoiding obstacles. The robot should be able to sense and avoid people and pets while performing it's tasks.
All of the mounts are printed with ABS plastic and attached to the base with M3 X 10mm screws and M3 nuts. I cut the radio shack printed circuit board to fit the shape of the base and printed a mount that matched it, added two header strips so I have several places to get power for sensors that I will be adding, and attached it to the battery.
I printed a motor control board mount to hold the board flat against the base and connected the motor wires, then I connected the power from the power distribution board.
I'm still working on the software for the FRDM-K82F to run the robot and read the sensors, I ran into some issues with Windows 10 bricking my first board.
I chased down a computer with Windows 7 and installed the new OpenSDA drivers in order to be able to program the board from my Windows 10 computer.
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