Detour

I am always getting sidetracked, but this time it is for a good reason. The other night I got the idea that we need something a little more fun and possibly easier project for younger people than the Robocup. So the journey in the spirit of robocup, is to build an autonomous vehicle that will win a NASCAR event by the year 2050. Since, we have to start somewhere, autonomous R/C racing seems to fit the bill. Roboracer version 0.1 is just about ready. The hardware is all setup and this week we will begin software development. The first version is going to be as simple as possible and we will attempt to traverse an empty oval racetrack. This will be accomplished by following the wall around the racetrack with only forward looking sonar and infrared distance sensors on the side to follow and keep parallel to the wall. Passing other cars will of course be the most difficult and version 1 of the Roboracer will get a few more sensors to accomplish this. Things to do: find out how to "stiffen" the shocks, take a closer look on how the CMUcam could be utilized and ground the servo power supply pins on the brainstem so the steering servo, throttle (ESC) and all the sensors will run off the same battery.