25 replies to this topic

[lor]

HOMER = Helping Oldies Move Everything Robot

Homer was designed with elderly citizens in mind as a lot of them, like my Opa, have mobility disabilities. He was my inspiration for this project as I don't usually create something for nothing - I like to have a purpose when I create things.

Basically Homer is controlled by a Wii Nunchuck - it utilizes the 3 axis accelerometre for the bracket tilting, the 2 buttons for the open and close clamps and the 2 axis joystick for the motor controls.
On the clamps is a force sensitive resistor - basically the larger amount of force you apply, the smaller the resistance becomes. I've used this to detect how much force to apply on an object so I can pick multiple sized objects up. One example I've used is an egg shell. Very fragile and yet I can pick other bulky objects up afterwards.

The microcontroller I've used is an Arduino Mega - ATmega1280. I've used this board pretty much because of the large amount of pins and added memory.
I've externally powered the board with a 9V battery.

Not going to go too in detail since it's 11:45pm & most of you are software nerds anyway haha, if you're interested in the finer things, give me a PM.

This project has given me LOTS of stress and hardship but it has all been worth it to see it at it's final, finished product:

 rach_22762..JPG   1.1MB   21 downloads

Feedback plz!

Attached Files

•  rach_22765..JPG   1.48MB   20 downloads
•  rach_22752..JPG   1.73MB   29 downloads
•  rach_22756..JPG   1.8MB   23 downloads
•  rach_22768..JPG   1.32MB   24 downloads
•  rach_22759..JPG   1.73MB   25 downloads
•  rach_22773..JPG   1.78MB   27 downloads

[Alexander]

Congrats Lor on your hard work and inspiration for something so nice.

[John]

That is very cool! How do robot makers come up with their names?

[zeroradius]

Ok that is awesome! Congrats on finishing it. Any plans on giving the nunchuck a longer cord or making it wireless so the old people don't have to get up to follow it? Whats the heaviest thing it can pick up? Does it do well going up inclines and in rough terrain? Did you build it on your own or did you follow blueprints/guides? If it is something you designed are you thinking about marketing it? If you made it wireless and made the arm so that it could extend upward (to hand items to people) and somehow managed to get that on a medicare approved list you could probably make a good bit of money off of it.

[lor]

Nullw0rm said:

Congrats Lor on your hard work and inspiration for something so nice.

Thanks. :)

John said:

That is very cool! How do robot makers come up with their names?

Haha well originally it was called 'Helping Hand Robot' but to me that sounded kind of boring so I wrote down all the key words which my robot does and I googled names starting with H so I could use the word Helping and found the H names that ended with R so it could be Robot. Kind of funny how my robot is also yellow so Homer kind of suits!

zeroradius said:

Ok that is awesome! Congrats on finishing it. Any plans on giving the nunchuck a longer cord or making it wireless so the old people don't have to get up to follow it? Whats the heaviest thing it can pick up? Does it do well going up inclines and in rough terrain? Did you build it on your own or did you follow blueprints/guides? If it is something you designed are you thinking about marketing it? If you made it wireless and made the arm so that it could extend upward (to hand items to people) and somehow managed to get that on a medicare approved list you could probably make a good bit of money off of it.

Thanks!
Wel that was one concern for me and I would have incorporated these devices called XBees, one to the nunchuck, one to the board, that would make it wireless, it just came down to time contraints. This is mainly a prototype more than anything anyway, a student next year can pick up my project ideas and possibly make it wireless with more functionality.
The heaviest things it can pick up... Well at the moment I have the FSR set to force 100, like keep closing the brackets while the FSR does not exceed that amount of pressure, but if I set it to say 200 then it could hold about 8kg (the servos have 11kg torque & the FSR has a range of 100g-10kg so it could support it)... I would need some added weights in the back of my robot however to stabilize it.
The main reason why I have tank treads on the robot is because it can go on all terrain, carpet & wood. Normal wheels may have struggled on carpet and that is something which I didn't want.
I built it totally on my own from my own idea in my head! Did not follow anyone's guidelines.
No I would not market it like this because since it is more like a prototype than anything I'd have to improve it quite a lot more. Like motors instead of servos, sturdier brackets and clamps, more functionality, etc.
Heh well I wish I could have lifted the item to a person rather than tilt (I incorporated the tilt maionly to lift an object off the ground) but servos spin in a circular motion and I'm not an engineer so I couldn't think of ways to do that. Well it would have to be relatively cheap I guess also, I've spent a lot of money on this project, not to mention labour, so I'd definitely not sell it for anything less than $500... And I don't think someone would want to buy this project for $500, haha. Not yet anyway.

Thanks guys.

[ethikz]

wow very nice Lor

[zeroradius]

I did not relies it was for a school project; your sure to get an A. That is epic and to think you came up with it all on your own is just amazing. Nice work!

[lor]

Yeh - it's my end of second year Software Engineering project.
Thanks zeroradius. :)

[Alexander]

Do you know the max battery life when carrying a more heavy object?

[lor]

The weight of the object has no effect on the battery.

[John]

I would assume heavier objects would cause the motors to draw more current, and therefore increase the power consumption.

[lor]

Well just because it's a 9V battery does not mean that I am powering the motors with 9V. There is a 5V regulator on the Mega which is powering the motors so that's about a 4.7V continuous supply (until the 9V battery is drained). At the moment no it does not have any effect on the board but obviously as the power drains out of the battery & it gets lower than I think 7V then yes it will have an effect on everything on my board.

What Nullw0rm said made like no sense anyway (no offense), there is no 'max battery life' when carrying a heavy object, it just drains as every battery does when it powers up different things. IF that is actually in fact what he means.

I'm presenting my project next Tuesday to a panel of judges - they just consist of some of my tutors. Like my Java & C++ tutor, security tutor, electronics tutor, etc.
I've also been asked to present my project on the 25th of Nov to people from the industry and programme advisory people. This is going to scare me soon!

Edited by lor, 21 October 2010 - 03:14 PM.