Autonomous Robot

This was actually a really overkill project for one of my classes in the 10th grade. I didn't get the top grade in my "technology class" the year before, which I wasn't happy with. So I asked the teacher for the freedom to make something I came up with myself (we previously got some pretty easy and tedious tasks like making a phone stand, etc.).

Since I experimented with Arduinos at the time, I decided that making a simple robot would be a cool project to "wow" the teacher for the top grade. I designed the parts in Fusion 360, and 3D printed them. The design of the robot was fairly simple. It had two wheels attached to two separate motors with a caster wheel in the back. This made full movement and turning possible for the robot.

The brains of the robot was an Arduino Uno with a motor controller shield connected to the two motors. I added a servo motor with a sonar sensor on the top of the robot to give it spacial awareness. It wasn't a practical robot, more of a learning and "show off" project. So the primary function it was programmed to do is to roll around the room autonomously with somewhat smart decisions. It "looked" left and right with its sonar sensor, then measured the distances and continued to the path with most space, over and over again, indefinitely.

Later I also added a BlueTooth module to the robot. I wrote an Android app for my phone, which allowed me to control it like an RC car and also activate an autonomous mode.