I’ve decided to make the next project that just about every person exploring electronics does… the making of a small robot. In my case, I’ll be using the Arduino to control the robot which will just be a robot that can avoid walls that I might build more functionality in the future.
The first part of the project is to acquire the necessary parts such as motors, gears, wheels, infrared sensors, etc. Luckily for me, I actually had a robot that I was building up before; it’s the Cycbot from RealRobots (for anyone who might remember it). I got around to issue 6 or 7 and eventually gave up on it. I do however have the motors, gears, wheels and the motor controller, so it’s all actually working, it just goes forward for now.
Below are the parts I’ve purchased and the parts I’ve already had.
- Arduino Duemilanove ATmega328
- 4 x NPN general transistors (e.g. PN100, PN2222)
- 2 x 220 Ohm resistors, 6 x 6.2K Ohm resistors
- 2 x Phototransistors
- Cycbot robot base
- Cycbot Motor controller
- 2 x 6 volt motors
- 2 x Gear boxes
- 2 x Wheels (plus 1 rotatable non-controllable wheel at the front)
- 9 volt battery and clip for Arduino
- Breadboard
- Some wire
And here is how the Cycbot robot looks so far before any modifications. We can see the 4 x AA battery container, a switch and the motor controller with 2 motors plugged in.
Below we see both motors, the gear box and wheels.
In the next part we’ll cover interfacing with the motor controller to make the robot go forward, turn and go backwards.
