Monday, January 7, 2008

Robotics Monday: Polyphemus

Name of Model: polyphemus/ This is my first robot with PC on board. 1 RCX, 1 USB turret, the lego webcam, 4 motor 2 polarity switch and 2 batteries pack for extra power
Created by: samurai74
Found at: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=292103
Details:
This robot chassis has a number of great features. For starters, it has a sturdy bed for placing a laptop computer (which can then control the robot and use the Vision Command Camera and a LEGO MINDSTORMS RCX). If you look at the mechanisms in play, you can see that the MINDSTORMS motors are connected to polarity switches - which in turn make battery boxes actually drive the chassis. The polarity switches change the directions of two motors in each position - allowing for a decent enough drive mechanism that is strong and agile but only uses two motors. It looks like there's a suspension system for the drive system too. Most essential, of course, is the well-placed IR dock (which allows the laptop to communicate with the RCX). I'm not really sure just what this chassis can do or what the software is like, but it looks like a great robot base to me.

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