Butler the Robot is not your typical autonomous tinkering robot. I'm planning on making him have all the bells and whistles that we imagine a robot having. He's planned to stand about 3.5 to 4 ft tall. He can be voice commanded by calling his name and then the command. You'll be able to talk to him as you normally would rather than having to memorize certain command keywords.
To increase the computing power, some processing done by voice will be done via computer wirelessly linked.
I'm basically thinking he will be a Wall-E v2.0 prototype. I'll update the post once it's all finished!
The track system alone is going to cost $300.00 and that does include the motors. I had to take into effect when he grabs something and the weight that'll be added to the motors.
So I'm assuming in the price range around $1000.00. I'm thinking it will be about 6 more months before I have it all the way assembled to showcase.
dmillsap06:
The track system alone is going to cost $300.00 and that does include the motors.
You might want to rethink the use of a tracked-based skid-steer robot, especially if the weight is going to be over a few pounds or so; it will tear the hell out of your flooring. My wife and I have a roomba that we use fairly frequently; along the "wall" edges and other areas that it follows constantly, the carpet is fairly well mashed down (we don't really give a damn - I'm just using this as an illustration of what can happen when using a relatively light-weight wheeled robot; just think of what a tracked one will do over time).
Using an electric wheelchair as a base, or something similar with wide tires might be a better choice (and if you shop carefully, it may even cost less).
That said - here are a couple of interesting links (and granted, they do use a "roomba" as the base - but that is infinitely better than what a tracked base would do to your floors):
Also, you might be interested in finding a copy of the following book; while a bit out-dated, some of the mechanicals and other ideas are still interesting:
thank you for your reply. I will certainly do some more research on the tracked system and see what other options I can think up. I'm not planning on Butler to weigh much but wanted to take in account something he may be carrying at the time or holding inside transporting to a different area. Each track is 3" wide also.
Added electret microphone to Butler's setup to use for voice processing rather than laptop's built-in microphone. Way better results. It can understand me from across the room with the TV noise at a medium level. I was very impressed. Still a little bit of tweaking to do still.
WiFly RN-XV module has been added and connects perfectly now that I've wrote out all the details and troubleshooted my way through it all. It connects to my wireless network and my computer is able to connect to it with no issues. Working on uploading sketches to Arduino remotely now.