Wifi controlled mobile robot

Peng Yang and Ben Stephens took on the project of developing and documenting a computing and IO platform for mobile robotics.

It will be used in Mechatronics 333 starting next quarter.

It is a PC104 stack comprising an x86 CPU card running Matlab xPC, and a multipurpose IO card. Realtime xPC can be controlled and programmed remotely via a wifi ethernet bridge.

While running, the realtime code can communicate with a desktop or laptop computer running matlab, also over the wifi link.

The PC104 stack and the wifi bridge can run for 90 minutes on a 2200mAH 9.6V rechargable NiMH battery (white brick in the photo).

The mechanical components were not the point of this project, so they were kept as simple as possible: just two brushed geared DC motors with optical encoders, driving two wheels.

Ben built a PWM amplifier for driving the brushed motors. Shown are two H-bridge packages, controlled from an analog voltage command, via PIC chips that Ben programmed to do the switching.

This is the GUI that communicates with (steers, accelerates) the mobile robot via wifi. It is on a laptop or desktop computer running matlab.

23MB MJPG video of the mobile robot demonstrating Ben and Peng's expert remote driving ability.

Video : 22 MB, 3786 Kbps, 30.0 fps, 320*240 (4:3), MJPG = Motion JPEG

Or,a 1.5MB DivX video

Video : 1.22 MB, 209 Kbps, 15.0 fps, 176*128 (4:3), DX50 = DivXNetworks Divx v5

Here is a better view of the PC-104 stack. From the bottom:

• Protective plate
• Break out board for the IO card, including power supply for the stack
• Sensoray 526 multifunction IO card
• Advantech x86 singleboard PC
• Ben's PWM motor driver

Here are the files and documentation