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Electronics Control
I will be using arduino nano boards - the generic Ebay kind. So basically, I will
have a main pc - a mini fanless mini ITX custom gaming pc to be exact - which will be mounted inside the chest of the
robot. Then I will have this pc hooked up by USB to a series of arduino nano
boards. This will give me a total of around 200+ servo motors I can control - which should be
enough for the whole bot's muscular system to operate. In order to connect by USB to all
Arduino boards, I will use a USB connection to one arduino who will daisy chain to the other arduinos
and messages will address arduinos by name, each arduino will be assigned a name and respond to commands
addressing it by name. So that single USB port on the PC will
be able to fork vastly to send signals to each of the different arduino servo controller boards.
The main brains gaming PC will do all the calculations of where all the different servos need to be and it will
tell them where to go. The servo motor controller boards will be controlled by the Arduinos and
the Arduinos will also update the main brains PC with their progress and any sensor input they are
reading in on their input pins. The PC will also connect by USB to a series of Arduino boards which will interface with strain
gauge sensors, potentiometers, current sensors, etc that will be placed throughout the robot's body
which will be able to detect when it is touching something, how much strain is being put on its muscle fibers,
etc. Using this information, it can gauge its balance, the weight of objects it is grabbing, whether it is bumping into something
or tripping over something, etc. The same PC will also connect by USB to webcam eyeballs (ELP USB camera
1080p 2 megapixel, wide angle). This will enable the PC to use computer vision to detect objects and
interpret its surroundings. The same PC will also connect to an arduino, again, by USB, which will connect
to a sonar device. This will enable the robot to detect distances to its surrounding walls and objects, which will provide
context and assistance to his computer vision for depth perception capabilities.
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