Sunday 8 February 2015

Autonomous Robot Update


The reliability program is on going, I have identified many problems
that need correcting the most surprising is heat the weather has been
very hot of late causing the computer to reset. On the software side
the old repository had to many old programs that were several versions
old I have replaced the structure with a more ROS like structure.
I have refreshed the moveit package and now control both arms
with Moveit. While it works with out tearing it self to pieces the old
L298N motor drivers are not really up to the task, they lack control below
70 PWM making fine adjustment near impossible. I never had the I2C bus
working with the Arduino Due reliably so I reverted to using a Arduino UNO
I still have the occasional glitch especially when doing restarts and poking
around the boards. That brings us to the subject of wiring, crimp pins
(header types )are not the best for a robot, they have been the biggest
problem to reliability I will go with aviation style solder pins and plugs.
The new motor drivers will be MC33887 with magnetic encoders not sure
what to do with the I2C bus