ee0i+@andrew.cmu.edu (Ethan Z. Evans) (07/08/90)
To those who know: I need to find two things: A two degree of freedom (pitch and 360 degree rotation) camera mount, and a good source of moderately priced ultrasonic rangefinders. After spending the last year making the base and the arm of our mobile platform work, its now time to give it eyes and ears. The basic idea (or so I've been told) is to use the sonar for collision avoidance and let the vision system do the rest. As such, the camera will be mounted up above the rest of the robot on a pole of some kind, and needs to be able to look at both where the base is going and what the arm is doing. The problem is, neither I nor my advisors have much of an idea of where to get this stuff. Any help on either item, whether an actual company rep. or simply another place to inquire would be apreciated. Thanks in advance, Ethan Evans ee0i@andrew.cmu.edu
green@ai.toronto.edu (Anthony Thomas Green) (07/09/90)
ee0i+@andrew.cmu.edu (Ethan Z. Evans) writes: >To those who know: > I need to find two things: A two degree of freedom (pitch and 360 >degree rotation) camera mount, and a good source of moderately priced >ultrasonic rangefinders.... <rest of article deleted> I have no idea about the camera mount, but it seems like THE place to get ultrasonic transducers is from Polaroid. I recently finished building a robot that used one, and it worked suprisingly well. We were able to interface the sonar with our CPU (MC6811) with minimal hardware (a couple of pull up resistors). The only tricky thing about it is that it draws 2.5 AMPS for 100ms every time you make it ping. If you're going to run it off of small batteries, make sure you put a big capacitor across power and ground so as not to affect any other components running on the same batteries. The handbooks provided are a little unclear, so if you have any questions feel free to direct them my way. Anthony Green green@ai.toronto.edu (416) 537-9889
adnan@rice.edu (Sarmad Adnan) (07/09/90)
Rhino Robots markets a 2dof platform . Powered by DC servo motors it is
large enough for a mid-sized camera.
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Sarmad Adnan (adnan@rice.edu)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~nagle@well.sf.ca.us (John Nagle) (07/09/90)
In article <kaZqC6600VoRMACFoT@andrew.cmu.edu> ee0i+@andrew.cmu.edu (Ethan Z. Evans) writes: >To those who know: > I need to find two things: A two degree of freedom (pitch and 360 >degree rotation) camera mount, and a good source of moderately priced >ultrasonic rangefinders. >The problem is, neither I nor my advisors have >much of an idea of where to get this stuff. Consider getting new advisors. CMU is the leading institution for this sort of thing. Hans Moravec is the authority on reducing the data from moderately priced ultrasonic rangefinders. I have all the data on the rangefinder hardware if you need it. John Nagle
ks5k@uvacs.cs.Virginia.EDU (Kristian Simsarian) (07/15/90)
Yes, Polaroid ultrasonic sensors are widely used as an economical rangefinder. Polaroid also offers hardware kits that include the transducers and control circuitry. You can contract them @: Polaroid Ultrasonic Components Group 119 Windsor St Cambridge, MA 02139 (617) 577-4681 If you call and ask, they will send an information packet on the equipment - including a couple of articles ( i.e. BYTE Oct 1984). Kristian Simsarian