I’ve finally gotten some real traction on my Robo-Magellan robot. The picture here shows the chassis I purchased from eBay for a platform to get started.

Actually I bought two of them, as I really want to have independent steering in the front and back. My plan was to chop the chassis in half, simply “glueing” one front end to the other front end. Now that I’ve had a look at how its put together I’ve got a slightly different plan, to make better use of the way the motor is connected. I can combine the back transmission and motor mount with the front axle pretty easily, without loosing much flexibility. It looks like I’ll be able to get independent four-wheel steering out of it too. I need to machine a new base plate, but I was pretty much expecting to do that anyways.

The next thing to do is select a “brain”. I’ve got plenty of sensors and motor controllers, but nothing that will give me a “real” platform for software development. The AVR processors are simply too underpowered for this sort of job, and the Tin Can Tools Hammer board I’ve been playing with recently doesn’t have enough I/O. I really want something that can run Linux, preferably also run Python for the main program. I could write it all in C++ but the development time can be reduced by using Python.

Anyone else building a Robo-Magellan robot?