12 March 2007

XBR online


Ive decided to finally commit to building a full scale robot, but rather then just do it and see how it turns out, ive decided to do a fair amount of design and prototyping in CAD before i start building.
Primarily the design is just the chassis and body , but the idea is to create a robot that can be used for a range of uses by changing a few parts around.
The robot is not a design for the lab or workbench, but rather a real world bot based on the four wheel skid steer rovoer designs that are all over the net.
The differance with this robot design is that it isnt some kit that looks like its a high school project, but rather a body that looks good and resembles robots from popular culture, the buyer would then insert his own brains and sensors to do what they want it to.
Ideally the robot will have power and drive systems installed before delivery, but parts for just the chassis could be supplied, and even an open source project letting people download plans and build their own prototype chassis, could be provided.
We are just going to run with this until it works, or we fall over, but we will be giving this the best go at success that we can muster, in terms of time effort and what little money we can scrape together.
The project has spawned a blog that will document the design of the robot shell, and hopefully instill a desire in other robot enthuthist's to build better robot bodies to but their robot projects into. The link is http://xbr-online.blogspot.com/