Mobile Robot Electrical Design

Exhibitor: Douglas Turk

Supervisor: Gordon Wyeth

Research Group: Complex and Intelligent Systems

Industry Sector: Scientific / Research Services

This project aims to design a new electrical board for mobile robots, and the RoboRoos in particular. The objectives of this project were:

• Allow for a mechanical design with up to six motors
• Improve the performance of the RoboRoo's motors by allowing higher battery voltages.
• Interface to a wireless communications board to allow half-duplex communication instead of the simplex communication currently used.
• Provide a range of interfaces for analog and digital sensors
• Be small enough to fit inside the RoboRoos robots.
• Include all of the functionality currently separated into three PCBs in one PCB.

The block diagram below shows how the subcomponents of the design have been linked to the microcontroller. The Motorola MC68376 was chosen to meet the above objectives. The board can control up to six motors bi-directionally. The design of the motor drive circuitry has been improved from the previous design to allow higher battery voltages, and therefore higher motor power output. Using the microcontroller and some external logic, the robots can communicate at 250kbps half-duplex using the wireless communications board. Previously, the robots supported only simplex communication. Finally, the new design supports a wider range of sensors and peripherals than the existing board. For example, the new design supports a speaker and accelerometers.

Although the board was designed for the next generation of RoboRoos, it would be suitable for other small mobile robotsas well.