Pathfinder and Penelope


Penelope is a small robot 25 cm high and 20 cm in diameter. I had built it in order to take part to a national microrobot competition which was held in Pisa (Italy), in April ’93. Its aim is to move autonomously, looking for light, sound and gas sources, without hitting obstacles.

It is provided with:

  • 5 sonars and 6 whiskers for obstacle avoidance
  • 5 groups of directional light sensor, 3 directional microphones with 4kHz filters and one gas sensor for sources searching
  • one compass and one odometer (=mileometer) for positioning
  • two DC motors for moving
  • one 12V lead battery for power supply
  • one Motorola micro-controller M68HC11, mounted on the Motorola Evaluation Board (EVB) that provides the user with:
    • one 8KB EPROM
    • one 8KB RAM
    • connection to a PC serial port for debugging



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