Now that the test environment is theoretically plausible it’s probably time to move onto a minimum viable product (MVP) of the robot design – name as above. That is, all bells and whistles will most likely not be required to work towards swarm demonstration. ROY should effectively be a far simpler prototype aiming to get […]
Robotic Ordinance Yomper (ROY) Read More »
Thinking about having a Big Brain outside of the robots. The Little Brains onboard can handle local behaviours, inputs and outputs from sensors to actuators respectively, whilst Big Brain does more serious computing such as image processing, direction finding, swarm coordination etc. It’s not too challenging technically as the ‘solar computer’ already talks to the
Started tinkering with a Printed Circuit Board (PCB) design for the robot due to reaching the limits of a small breadboard design. If the Xiao ESP32S3 Sense is to be used which has a camera + an additional i2s microphone is added (for now getting the onboard Sense mic working under Micropython is not easy)
Managed to ‘brick’ a couple of Xiao ESP32C3s at the heart of the robot. Had one spare remaining, commented out the offending code (timer exceptions – dark art though that’s another story). Anyhow, to ‘unbrick’ the others I believe this is the procedure: Can’t exactly remember the order of the above so PLEASE do experiment!
There’s been a brief hiatus in the development of this project. The hope is that further progress occurs over the holidays. The main obstacle, besides a lack of available time, has been the addition of the Time of Flight range finder on the robot platform as it’s already bustling with various elements; actuators, sensors etc.
