Intro:

Up to now I have used only atmel AVR microcontrollers, so this bot is no exception with: ATmega16. Firmware is written entirely in C, also avrlib library for timing/PWM/UART was used. Although program is written with wxWidgets (C++) library, it won’t compile under Windows because the system calls in serial communication part, thought if you remove it, it should build with no hassle.

In action:

The build:

Basic communication scheme: (USB-to-RS232 (PL-2303))->MAX232->UART

Power: for servos and logic I’ve used L7805 with big heatsink (and yes, at operation time it was necessity) and DSA-20R-12 switching adapter

Servos: 2xMG995‘s for main arms and  for 2xHXT900 “claws”

uC: atmega16; 7.3728Mhz; LF: 3f, HF: de

Other thoughts:

In order to use make with firmware you should export avrlib directory with:

export AVRLIB=/path/to/avrlib

Color recognition would be nice, but because it’s easy to do (as in: no challenge) and some cross platform problems (Unix/Linux) with webCAM I didn’t implement it (also partly because it’s not intended for daily use, and You should know that programmers are lazy)

Any questions? ASK!

Source files (tl;dr):

• Firmware: rdrk_fimware.2009-09-11.zip
• Software: soon
• CAD: cdr+dwg
• Eagle schematics/board: soon

Extra:

• video: rdrk.mov
• soundtrack: deep skydivers – momentum.mp3 (official site)

P.S. everything is under GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE.