Cybot Resurrected

Table of Contents

1. Features
2. Hardware and Electronics
3. Software

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This is a project to bring my old Cybot back my to life.

After I lost my remote control (it was stolen actually, by some idiot who probably thought it was a game controller 😠 ), Cybot has just been sitting there for quite a number of years.

A while back I built FoamBot which was a robot in which I used Foam Board exclusively as construction material, continues servos as drive train, and an Arduino Uno as MCU. The software for FoamBot was based on a simple co-operative multitasking library, with all functionality built as (almost) completely independent tasks to form a very loosely defined type of Robot Operating System.

Due to time constraints and some waning of interest, FoamBot took a backseat. When I now recently got the urge to build a remote controller robot again, I decided to use as much of Cybot as possible, but replace the MCU with something Arduino based. This is where we now begin 😄.

Features

This list will be expanded as more things are added, at a minimum, these are the features I would like for now:

• Use as much of the Cybot sensors and hardware as possible
• Controlled via:
  • Direct serial connection - this will be more for testing and debugging, and will be a tethered connection.
  • Infrared - this will obviously be a remote control, it should use the original Cybot IR Receiver, and should be able to use any available IR remote (after training Cybot for the remote - see below)
  • Bluetooth - also a remote control. This will allow many mobile apps to act as a remote control, and will allow things like using a phone's gyro, accelerometer and other sensors to control the bot by simply tilting and moving the phone in the air.
• All input controls should have the options to be trainable in order to ensure the controller can issue the correct robot control commands. Trained control mappings should be stored in EEPROM to survive power offs.
• Obstacle avoidance using light sensors and/or ultrasonic and/or IR (using a separate IR sensor).
• Line follower option.

Hardware and Electronics

ToDo

Software

See here for details about the Robot Control software.