Body & Electronics

This page is about the body and electronics, check out the main project index for the rest.

There are some YouTube videos about this section, scroll down for pictures and words.

The upper body will house the electronics including the microcontroller and motor drivers etc. I’ve allowed for a separate pivot point so the upper body can be used to stabilise the robot front to back, and also a bar to attach extra mass to until I build some form of arms.

The main construction is again Aluminium 2020 extrusion and 3D printed parts in Colrfab HT and ABS.

So far we have an Arduino Due which is 84Mhz and 32 bit installed, along with a 16 channel i2c motor driver which will feed the eight BTS7960 motor drivers for each motor. Each joint now has a feedback pot to allow for accurate joint positioning.

Electronics are wired and basic movement has been achieved – check out the second video above.

I’ve built a Bluetooth remote for testing – this sends one integer to the robot, and the individual bits are stripped out to translate the button presses to actions.