Antdroid

Inspiration

Antdroid is an autonomous robot design to do explore the red planet Mars. Inspired by ants, our "Ant"droids are designed with moving legs instead of wheels. It is design with simple motion mechanism and modular attachments that the tools are easy to replace and interchange.

What it does

There are three initial roles: the explorer, the worker, and the miner/fighter.

The explorer will be equipped with sensors and work as a pioneer to locate objects and locations that are worth further investigate in.

The worker will be equipped with a grabber that could collect and transport the objects back to home base.

The miner/fighter will be equipped with a destructive tool (a pickax or linear-pulse-accelerator) to clear any obstruction or dig into the target.

These antdroids are supposed to explore Mars autonomously, but also follow instruction if needed. They are capable of sending updates on Twitter to socialize with followers and share video of basically nothing but red dusts.

How I built it

They are built on top the Raspberry Pi Zero W micro-controller. They are powered by a Li-Po battery. A single servo is used for motion movements. Camera and proximity sensors are used to report surroundings.

Challenges I ran into

Basically, everything refused to work and we manage to sort things out eventually. The initial design of the mechanical movement isn't performing as predicted, a redesign is done. The linear-pulse-accelerator was constructed as a mining tool. However, due to limited resources and health & safety concerns, we are unable to demonstrate it use at this time.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

A 24hr robot build from scratch is never done by us. We manage to navigate our robot with single servo, and have it report a still image onto Twitter.

What I learned

To use API in our application. Get to improve our software skills. Teambuilding. Enjoying our time in our first HACKATHON

Built With

• electronics
• hardware
• python
• raspberry-pi