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On the ardupilot board, what is the difference between A10 / A11 ground pins and the PWM ground pins?

I'm looking for an electrical explanation of the statement here: Warning: Do not connect power (red + & black -) from the RC10 (A10) & RC11 (A11) connectors to the servos, just use the ...
5k views

How to build a liquid filling machine using piston? [closed]

My team developed a filling machine for liquids which uses a piston to measure and deliver volumes 0.1 to 1 liters into bottles. It is built mostly with mechanical parts and we'd like to replace most ...
97 views

Single power source for electronics and actuators

It seems popular to build robotic systems with separate supplies for the electronics and motors/servos, but what would be involved in a circuit that powers both from one source? If it helps, here is ...
341 views

automatic sorting with barcode identification inside a refrigerator [closed]

I'm endeavoring to prototype a challenging sorting mechanism inside a fridge and would appreciate any constructive tips on how to get from the specs to a plausible design. Problem The aim of the ...
236 views

Optimal-time trajectory in 2D and 3D with simple constraints

I'm trying to find the optimal-time trajectory for an object (point mass) from point p0 with initial velocity v0 to point ...
41 views

Pros/Cons of common robotics “kits” at the high school level [duplicate]

I am interested in starting a robotics club at my high school next year, since we don't have one, and I want to know what the pros/cons are of common kits. I already have a Vex kit since my uncle is ...
3k views

Just out of curiosity, can the concept of a Quadcopter be applied to an ROV? Would it work the same way underwater as it would be in Air? If not what kind of modifications it would take to implement ...
1k views

Does more “Power” (W) means better motor?

If a motor has more Power (W) from another it means that it is better?
886 views

Is this a good quadcopter build? [closed]

3D CAD: After some editing: I'm building the frame myself from aluminum and polycarbonate. EDIT: all frame is polycarbonate except of the arms (and all screws & nuts & washers)), they are ...
354 views

Help with adaptive fill algorithm for Water Color Painting Robot

TL;DR: Can anyone point me to a good adaptive path fill algorithm? Hey there, my name is James, and my daughter built an awesome painting robot with her friends over at Evil Mad Scientist labs, even ...
692 views

Motor and Ethernet shields together

I was wondering if it is possible to plug a motor shield on top of an Ethernet shield, even though the direction pins on the motor shield would be connected to the same pins as the spi bus. I was ...
30 views

How would I go about interfacing the raspberry pi and arduino? [duplicate]

I want to do a project where I control motors, and the arduino seems ideal for that. However, I'm going to need to do quite a bit of processing on the back end first. Connecting the arduino to a ...
7k views

How are units of noise measurement related to units of a sensor's data measurement?

I'm trying to understand how noise is represented for accelerometers, gyroscopes, and magnetometers so that I can match the requirements of my project with the standard specs of these sensors. I ...
11k views

How to get data from ArduPilot through Serial Port

I'm doing a project related to telemetry, and I want to make ArduPilot (programmed with ArduPlane 2.73) send through a serial port the sensors informations such as height, GPS position, etc.. I have ...
6k views

Maze Solving Algorithm For Mazes With Loops

I am trying to implement a line following robot that can solve mazes similar to the Pololu robots you can watch on youtube. My problem is the maze that I am trying to solve is looped and therefore ...
112 views

The last robotics project I worked on involved autonomous outdoor navigation, using a microcontroller for lower-level control and a computer for image processing and decision making. I worked more ...
2k views

trapezoidal vs sinusoidal commutation

How do you know if a commercial driver is working with trapezoidal or sinusoidal commutation? If you measure the 3-phase voltage applied to the PMSM by means of an oscilloscope, will you see a ...
3k views

I haven't made or flown any quadcopter, but I am fascinated by them. But when looking at the frame of a lot of designs, after whachting this video I wondered why a lot the frames are in an X shape. ...
278 views

laser scanner distance

I'm looking at laser scanners and I see a huge range of detection distances. The furthest I've see are 30m if you exclude the very expensive ones that claim up to 150m. My question is what is the ...
327 views

Pan and tilt bracket for a stepper motor [closed]

Currently, I'm using a pan tilt bracket that works with the servos I have (spark fun product 9065), and are generic to all servos. However, servos aren't accurate enough. I'm looking at other options, ...
4k views

Controlling a quadrotor from a PC

I need to control quadrotor from a PC, without using a joystick. I have got a mini-beetle quad V929 Beetle 4-Axis and also have this NRF24L01+ Wireless Transceiver Module Chip (2.4 GHz ...
2k views

How can I improve the map in my Mobile Autonomous Robot using KINECT

A little background of my aim I am in the process of building a mobile autonomous robot which must navigate around an unknown area, must avoid obstacles and receive speech input to do various tasks. ...
268 views

What is the best way to go about building a robot hand that can type on keyboard, move &click mouse, swipe touchscreens? [closed]

How would you go about building a robot that can use a computer? Type on the keyboard, move & click mouse? I am talking about physically manipulating the hardware inputs, and the robot would be ...
239 views

Building robots with high reliability, durability, and battery life

I'm involved in research on psychologically plausible models of reinforcement learning, and as such I thought it'd be nice to try and see how well some to the models out there perform in the real ...
335 views

PID Conundrums for Legged Robots

I am currently working on a legged hexapod which moves around using a tripod gait. I have two sets of code to control the tripod. Set 1: Time based control In this code set, I set the tripod motor ...
638 views

Is a Raspberry Pi processor powerful enough for a mobile chatbot?

In general, is a Raspberry Pi processor powerful enough for a mobile chatbot? I want to make a small mobile robot that is like a chatbot. Is a Raspberry Pi processor powerful enough for any type of AI ...
2k views

Pushing Buttons Remotely over Ethernet

So I want to program something that will simply push a button, but controllable over ethernet. I'm new to robotics so I don't know where to start. What's the best way to control an actuator over a ...
4k views

Stream Real-time Video with Environmental Data Overlaid

I want to embed environmental data collected from sensors into a live video stream from a camera. Has anyone done this or know how I would go about doing something like this? Is there a library ...
107 views

Wearable Accelerometor

I've worked with wiimote accelerometer, but I think now I want to move past that. Mostly because I want to have a wider range of available gestures and I think that using only one accelerometer has ...
29k views

What is the cheapest / easiest way of detecting a person?

I'd like to know if anyone has had success detecting a warm-bodied mammal (ie. Human) using standard off the shelf, inexpensive sensors? Ideally, I'd like to use an inexpensive sensor or ...
198 views

Software for robot parts interaction modeling

I'm robotic engineer, using OpenSCAD to model robotic components (gears, pulleys, parts, etc). But I need an application to model the physics and interaction of the components (for i.e. how will robot ...
271 views

How to tell when an ArduPilot has finished initialising its gyros (without referencing telemetry)?

Using ArduPilot software (fixed wing, ArduPlane), I know that after I boot up I need to keep the system sit still while the gyros initialise. When I have ground station in the field it's easy to know ...
280 views

programming pan-tilt unit with C

I am trying to write a C code for a pan-tilt unit model ptu-d46 using visual studio 2010 in Windows 7, but I can't find any tutorial or reference on how to do so. All the user's manual mentions is ...
1k views

Prop orientation for tricopters

This question stems from previous question, where I asked why does the prop orientation matter so much for a multirotor. But on further research† I found that these reasons need not apply to a ...
1k views

Instantaneous Center of Rotation for a differential Drive Robot

I want to find the instantaneous center of rotation of a differential drive robot. Assuming I know that the robot will travel with a particular linear and angular velocity $(v,w)$ I can use the ...
758 views

Prop Orientation on a Multirotor

While looking up information for the right propellers for my quadcopter, I realized that they had different orientations i.e. Clockwise and Counterclockwise. On further research I found that all multi-...
617 views

Can I use Ziegler-Nichols's rules to find PID parameters for a non linear system

I'm trying to use a PID to stabilize a system described from the following difference equation: $$y_{k+1} = a y_k \sqrt{(1-y_k)}~~~ + b y_{k-1} ~+ c u_k$$ Can I use Ziegler-Nichols's rules to find ...
251 views

Building a Autonomous pesticide spraying system using swarm robotics based on odor (volatile Organic Compounds) detection [closed]

Visible worms, pests, and diseased parts of plants emit a unique odor (Volatile Organic compounds with different concentrations). I understand that sensors which can quantitatively detect these ...
2k views

Working of Autonomous Lawn mower(ALM) in an unbounded area without a perimeter wire

I have an Autonomous Lawn mower(ALM) which can mow a certain lawn area when that area is bounded by a perimeter wire. Even when that perimeter wire is removed, it has to mow the above mentioned area ...
783 views

qt ros tutorial issue

I am working on a robotic application under R.O.S. groovy Galapagos. I would like to make a tutorial about how create a template app with catkin_create_qt_pkg. I'm unable to call the script ...
8k views

Single camera vision and mapping system

Some time ago I saw a demo of a small 'toy tank' with a single camera mounted on it. This tank was able to drive around the floor and detect objects and then move/steer to avoid them. The interesting ...
1k views

Upgrading the motors on a SeaPerch ROV - more torque, or more RPMs?

I am looking to upgrade the motors for SeaPerch underwater ROVs so we can carry heavier payloads and more equipment. My question is, should I look for motors which have a higher RPM and lower ...
995 views

Aluminum vs Carbon Fiber

So building a quadrocopter from scratch HAS a lot of decision making, and I need some input on the material choice. I have short listed Aluminum and Carbon Fiber for the Arms and support of the ...
95 views

Open source “sci-fi”-like robot projects IRL [closed]

I'm looking for a robot that is capable of moving around and has arms that can get objects in one place and drop in another. Something akin to what we see in most sci-fi movies, though much simpler. ...
1k views

Permission to fly UAVs

Okay, this might sound like a stupid question but, is there some sort of a permission in the US I might require to fly a quadcopter or a UAV for that matter? I couldn't find much help anywhere else.
76 views

Association of multiple measurements to multiple objects

I have a matrix of M measurements and N objects. Each cell contains a cost of assignment a particular measurement to the object. I want to assign them optimally. As the condition, only one measurement ...
1k views

Arduino Controlled RC Car. What now? [closed]

I bought an RC car about a year ago. A few days later I integrated an arduino nano into the vehicle. The only thing the arduino does is to receive the RC signal and pass it on to the esc/servo. So, ...
121 views

Multicopter odd or even [duplicate]

I would like to ask which is better to design the multicopter with odd or even number of propellers? and why?