I live in NW Pennsylvania, and I am looking for others in my area that are interested in the Adruino or robotics. I am expecting my first Arduino Mega AVR ATmega1280-16AU in the mail shortly. This will me my first microcontroller project. In the past, I have used crude jamming methods (with doides and gates)to get the desired function. Then moved on to hacking a parallel port on old PC's, and using Qbasic to control it. I am interesting in building robot. This will be my 5th robot, and would like to use all the things I learned from the past.
I want to build a octopod with ultrasound range finders, servos for locomotion, and contact switches for each foot(or equivalent). I would also like the robot to "seek" its charging station when the voltage is low, and "plug" itself in until charged. I also would like the robot to be able to climb stairs and "know" it is up stairs, so if its voltage gets low, it can safely navigate to the downstairs charger. Once I get it mobile I would like to add other functions such as speech recognition. Also optional, would be if the front 2 legs could pivot again and be used as hand.
Thanks in advance.
