Racer Design

[hgordon]

With the new year, I was reminded of the RoboRacer project and my HPI Micro RS4 1:18 scale r/c car that had been gathering dust for 2+ years. I took a stock SRV-1 Blackfin robot controller, added connectors to the switched battery power and 2 servo signals, and mounted the Blackfin with little trouble to the RS4.

This is stock photo of an unmodified RS4 -

[img]http://www.surveyor.com/images/micro04-stock.jpg[/img]

Here is my RS4 with the r/c receiver removed, ESC (speed controller) moved toward the front of the frame, and SRV-1 Blackfin board set with Wifi radio mounted on standoffs -

[img]http://www.surveyor.com/images/micro04-srv.jpg[/img]

The underside of the SRV-1 radio/motor board with pins 5 and 6 of the expansion header connected to the servo input signals for steering and speed control -

[img]http://www.surveyor.com/images/micro04-pcb.jpg[/img]

I can drive the RS4 around via Wifi connection to the same java console we use to control the Surveyor SRV-1 Blackfin Robot, though a joystick control would be much more effective than the button commands shown below. For those familiar with the SRV-1 robot, the only change was a redefinition of the 'M' motor commands in srv.config to 's' servo commands, e.g. changing
button.2=buttons/forward.png
command.2=4D323200
to
button.2=buttons/forward.png
command.2=73303100

[img]http://www.surveyor.com/images/micro04-console.jpg[/img]

Next step is to work on autonomous control. We have a new Lisp interpreter built into the SRV-1 firmware and are in process of upgrading the built-in C interpreter, but I have been thinking about the image processing primitives for this application, and will probably add some new functions.