Very early experiment in concurrent control of multiple elements: a tracked robot, a robot dog and a drone. It’s taken some effort to get this far and there’s still further to go! Programmatic control requires improvements. Here the cognitive burden is quite high although with practice that should lessen. Additionally, there is no clear shared
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 »
Better view of the scene below using a Raspberry Pi Camera 3 Module with a wide Field of Vision (FoV). Good auto focus too. Again, this is a snapshot of the video streamed from the Pi on the ceiling of a small room to the ‘solar computer’. Dimensions now are reasonable at approximately 260cm x
Experimental Parameters The Sequel Read More »
The above is a screenshot of a ‘birds eye’ video of an area of interest below. The area is approximately 80cm by 104cm and the height of the camera is roughly 240cm above the centre of the area. The general feeling is that if this is used ‘as is’ to begin to demonstrate ‘swarming’ of
Experimental Parameters 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)
After a little testing on artificial grass wondering if we’re reaching the end of the road (so to speak) for wheels on the robots? Wheels (tracks too) definitely have limitations as to the kind of terrain they can handle. Legs though are comparatively a lot more complicated when built ‘properly’. That is, legs can use
Reinventing the Wheel: Legs! Read More »
Each of 13 designs of robots, drones and computers were listed together with the experiment and results then the best and worst features of each were also listed. The most notable features were finally aggregated to form general specifications for a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) for these efforts: Finally, an additional specification (of sorts) is
Thinking Backwards Read More »
There were some developments not (yet) reported here. For example, the user cognitive load actively controlling a robot and drone simultaneously was onerous! As mentioned on X though it’s perhaps time to take stock of numerous experiments, developments & test results to create some kind of Minimum Viable Product (MVP). That is, it’s tempting to
Roadmap Sitrep: Lost in Space! Read More »
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!
