MotoMouse And MotoBot - Mark-World.com

MotoBot With Eye

Technical Details:
MotoBot is powered by a 3.7Volt LiPoly battery that gets stepped up to 5V with a buck converter. This bot has two bi-directional wheels. This bot is a fully self contained thinking bot who thinks and is programmed in C. MotoMouse is controlled with a radio hand-controller. His 'phase 2' as shown above still allows him to be controlled via radio as in phase 1 so he can be told to move in assorted patterns using separately controlled dual drive wheels. This bot is able to detect distance and angle to a small lighted object using a have a 256bit linear detection optical eye enabling detection of a little light if it's within a 35 degree area in front of him

MotoMouse uses a custom Mark-Toys Line Detection board seen below

MotoBot Display

MotoMouse Is the Line Following Configuration

In mid 2016 we configured the MotoBot platform to be converted into MotoMouse to solve a maze for a HBRC (Home Brew Robotics Club) compitition to solve a large 8 foot by 8 foot maze on the floor. He was able to do it and hopes to compete again!

See the Oct 2017 version of MotoMouse follow lines in this youtube video. MotoMouse is using the custom Mark-World line sensor seen on the Robotic Subsystems page of this site.

A nice little two line display shows you what he is thinking or seeing and tells the distance to hsi little light (if it is in front).

In Late 2016 The MotoBot platform was greatly enhanced with use of Teensy 3.2 processor and a precision motor controller using my Mark-Toys motor control (seen elsewhere on this site).

MotoBot Converts to the Line Following MotoMouse Or A Cycloptic Seeker

MotoBot (Came First Before MotoMouse Abilities)

MotoBot is a self contained, thinking bot with a propriatary 'cycloptic' linear vision systemthat allows him to find a little light and know how far it is away and if he has to turn right or left to get it in the center. MotoBot can also tell if he gets to the edge of a table. MotoBot now converts back to MotoMouse as required so see below for that configuration.

You can see a Demo I did in Sept 2014 to the Home Brew Robotics Club at this MotoBot demo video link and go about 3 minutes into the video to see my discussion. In this video it shows many of his 'intellegent' features and my demo segment is only about 5 minutes long so enjoy.

MotoBot is thus able to wander about on a table and then when he sees his little light he approaches it and tracks it till he looses interest and then continues to roam about. Motobot has a few sensors to see the edge of the table and so on. MotoBot can also be controlled with a hand held radio transmitter to do basic movement and rotations.

A nice little two line display shows you what he is thinking or seeing and tells the distance to hsi little light (if it is in front).

Smart Line Sensing System

This subsystem is being moved to the Robotic Subsystem page in Nov 2017

The line sensor board has an Arm M0 processor that drives the IR detector units and takes analog readings of each detector. The power here is nice analog values get back to the host to decide on line detection smarter than with dumb threshold only devices for line detect.

The onboard Arm M0 is an STM32F031 and has super tiny pads but a process I use can deal with this in my workshop.

A host talks to this board using a serial port protocol that allows different formats and adjustment of detect parameters all from the host side as needed.