AutoTank - Ver 1

After few weeks of playing with LEDs, waiting for the parts and a 'massive' man flu I have put things together on the tank and made a tank robot. What this tank does is go forward at full throttle, when it detects some obstacles in front turn left.

AutoTank V1.1 - Parts list

1. Sharp IR sensor - GP2Y0A41SK0F
2. 2 x DC motors(came with the tank toy)
3. 1 motor driver - SN754410 Quadruple half H driver
4. The brain - Arduino UNO R3
5. One 9V(PP3) battery to power the Arduino
6. 4 x NiMH cells to give 4.8V - for the motor driver power
7. An SPDT switch (SPST was enough for this application but I didn't have any!)
8. And lots of insulation tape to keep things together - proper engineering

AutoTank on test run

Yes, as I said before this turns in only one direction and there is no bump sensor. IR sensor is a range sensor so it is used to control the speed depending on the distance from the obstacle(not to a great deal) with dead stop distance.

Planned improvements for next version

1. Make alternate left and right turn
2. Protect the front IR sensor from colliding into things
3. Use a bigger range of speed control on straight control

There are a lot of hardware improvements required(software too) but I don't want to try to do too much in one go and I got to wait for the hardware parts anyway(not even ordered yet).

Shopping list - to start making your robot

Here is a list of basic things and some extra bits that I think essential to make a simple robot. I know it depends on how you define the simple robot but I am making this list keeping my tank robot in mind!

1. Bread board 
2. Wires - those ones you can directly push into the bread board are great! 
3. Resistors 
4. Capacitors 
5. LEDs - at least one 
6. A soldering kit 
7. A digital multimeter 
8. A computer 
9. A programmer to compile and burn your program to the microcontroller 
10. Microcontroller - For a beginner I think buying a microcontroller kit is the best idea - like Arduino, or biotrics cerebellum. 
11. Motors - dc or stepper or servo 
12. Sensors - I will be using an IR range sensor 
13. Buy some old second hand toys so you can build your robot frame from it. I have been to couple of car boot sales and got enough metal frames and wheels and all sorts of stuff.

Some good shopping websites - for UK

• http://www.phenoptix.com - They are specialised in LEDs, but I got my Arduino for a very good deal from there.
• http://www.bitsbox.co.uk/ - Very small company but good number of components and deals, I bought an electronics kit and a Sharp IR range finder from there. Best deal I found on internet.
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