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[DPRG] Tarzan's lessons learned at the DPRG Outdoor Challenge
Subject: [DPRG] Tarzan's lessons learned at the DPRG Outdoor Challenge
From: David
dpa at io.isem.smu.edu
Date: Thu May 15 10:32:58 CDT 2008
Robert,
Great analysis and summary!
Your comments on traveling with robots reminded me that I did
something similar in traveling to the SRS Robothon in 2003:
<http://geology.heroy.smu.edu/~dpa-www/robo/carryon/>
although these were much smaller robots. I have not as yet
tried to fly with jBot, so your description is very interesting
to me in that regard.
Another take away from your posting is that the outdoor
challenges have been useful in providing obtainable goals
to build towards and also as diagnostics for the platform
and control algorithms so developed. That was my hope,
so thumbs up!
It also looks like that you and Kenneth have arrived by
different methods a similar conclusion: that a modern
microcontroller with associated FPGA for hardware
functions like PWM and quad decode makes for a
very flexible and powerful robot controller.
This is in fact what led me to the 68332 originally,
which is now maybe 15 years old --- the combination
of a powerful general purpose 32 bit cpu with
hardware functions, in this case the integrated
TPU coprocessor. Part of that may be my preference
as a programmer to keep everything in one memory
space and reduce the amount of inter-processor
communication required to a minimum. As has
been observed, the 68332 programming is not
for the faint of heart.
Also interesting work you have done on the
brushless DC motors. We us these exclusively in
R/C helicopters with Li-poly batteries. In that case,
however, the motor is usually set to run at a constant
RPM ("idle-up") and the heli is controled with the
pitch of the blades. I've not yet ventured into their
use on robots, so your report is very useful. I do know
the the R/C racecar guys have resisted using them
because of the dynamic braking problem to which you
allude.
Great stuff! Keep it coming.
best.
dpa
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