DPRG mailing list archives: [DPRG] Processing unit for mobile robot

Sun Apr 20 09:59:26 CDT 2008

>
> David said: Saturday, April 19, 2008 10:11 AM
>> To: dprglist at dprg.org
>> Subject: [DPRG] Processing unit for mobile robot
>>
>> Howdy,
>> Also a very interesting thread on the difficulties of using a
>> PC platform for robotics by Robert Scheer over on the SRSList,
>
> Answering this email, listing some of the robots in our club, it
> came to me to wornder: is there was even one example of a robot
> based on PC motherboard and Big Iron OS, that didn't have to
> have supporting microprocessors under it?
>
> As I tried to think of examples, I couldn't remember even a
> single robot that fit the description of PC based and no micros
> doing the real work.
>
> Can you or others point to an example? Do they even exist as
> real operational robots?

Somewhat dated and no longer in existance, but the DPRG club robot GARP
had a 486 based PC as the only controller.  I know, because I installed
it.  It drove the H-bridges from pins on the parallel port.  It was
running RT-Linux generating the PWM pulses.

Ed Okerson