---

The 3D printed robot shown in the two images above, with one drive wheel and steerable front wheels is controlled and managed by an Arduino Uno with a (quite old version!) motor shield.

The shield allows the drive motor, steering wheels servo, and the ultrasonic sensor (and a line follower sensor that was not yet implemented in the software) all to be managed through an Arduino 'sketch' (the code) that is developed and downloaded to the Uno from the Arduino IDE.

The motivation for the development of this robot back in 2019 was because (some years earlier - sorry the exact origins have been lost!) the very first robot that inspired all of the robotic work to date was a very simple design, as shown in the image on the right, that used large lollipop sticks and lots of glue gun hot melt adhesive to build a very open and quite elegant chassis. But unfortunately it was not very robust and had to undergo frequent repairs; it was also very awkward to get the six AA batteries in and out of the holder that was a structural part of the chassis design, and starting the robot was achieved by simply plugging in the power and it all starting up at once.

The 3D printed redesign therefore aimed to overcome the original 'lollipop' issues, which were broadly with:

• build components that all screw together in a robust manner;
• a battery 'box' where the 6xAA battery holder can slide in and out, making the batteries very accessible; and
• a series of 'slide switches' that are used for operational control with potentially different modes of operation made available within the one single set of code.

It does have to be said however that the new 3D printed chassis design is perhaps not quite so 'elegant' as the original 'stick' design and might be considered somewhat 'chunky' and overdesigned - so further design iterations are definitely possible to improve the aesthetics.

The software development for the robot is also a somewhat basic, but nevertheless workable, approach and the obstacle avoidance algorithms definitely need some fine tuning - as is evident from the video clip below where the robot does detect obstacles but overruns and bumps into them before backing off and seeking a different travel direction. 

 

autonomous obstacle avoidance but the software still needs some development!

This set of pages describes a series of wheeled robot projects that are controlled by the various versions of the Raspberry Pi or microcontrollers like the ESP8266 or ESP32.

 

Wheeled robot projects:

 

Robotics projects:

 

All the currently available maker project information: