I built this entirely from scratch in 2002. This picture was taken before I put the arm on it. It originally was powered by 2 servos modified for continuous rotation but then was powered by 2 small gearmotors using a homemade H-bridge using relays then Darlington transistors. I wasn't very successful with the transistors so I went back to the relay based H-bridge which worked great but was jerky.

The robot stood about 3 feet tall, had a soldered LED face and beeped for "personality", had 4 homemade bump sensors, a homemade line following infrared sensor, and 2 infrared collision detection sensors. It later had a single arm with a bucket connected to a servo. The bucket had an infrared sensor. It's name was Bob Dole.

The main task this robot performed was to dump trash. It would wait on a black line next to the couch and begin a sequence when it detected something being placed into the bucket. At that point, it would follow the line until the front infrared sensor detected something (the trash can at the end of the line), stop, pivot the arm 180 degrees dumping the trash, retract the arm, turn 180 degrees and get back on the line, follow the line until it detected something in front of it (my end table next to the couch), turn 180 degrees and get back on the line, then sleep and wait for the bucket to be filled again.

Bob Dole was parted out for a tank project I began working on but never finished. I still have some parts that will be used on one of the Lynxmotion bots now.

I built this entirely from scratch in 2002. This picture was taken before I put the arm on it. It originally was powered by 2 servos modified for continuous rotation but then was powered by 2 small gearmotors using a homemade H-bridge using relays then Darlington transistors. I wasn't very successful with the transistors so I went back to the relay based H-bridge which worked great but was jerky.

The robot stood about 3 feet tall, had a soldered LED face and beeped for "personality", had 4 homemade bump sensors, a homemade line following infrared sensor, and 2 infrared collision detection sensors. It later had a single arm with a bucket connected to a servo. The bucket had an infrared sensor. It's name was Bob Dole.

The main task this robot performed was to dump trash. It would wait on a black line next to the couch and begin a sequence when it detected something being placed into the bucket. At that point, it would follow the line until the front infrared sensor detected something (the trash can at the end of the line), stop, pivot the arm 180 degrees dumping the trash, retract the arm, turn 180 degrees and get back on the line, follow the line until it detected something in front of it (my end table next to the couch), turn 180 degrees and get back on the line, then sleep and wait for the bucket to be filled again.

Bob Dole was parted out for a tank project I began working on but never finished. I still have some parts that will be used on one of the Lynxmotion bots now.