For this particulate project, I was given a complete Simscape model of a 3R robot. My objective was to develop a controller that the manipulator could use to follow a given trajectory.
Once the trajectories of the end effector were developed, I calculated the joint angles for each joint using standard inverse kinematics formulas. For the manipulator control, I used a combination of a PID and a transpose Jacobian controller to control the robot's joint torques. Transpose Jacobian control is a popular method of controlling robotic systems and is less computationally intense than inverse Jacobian. The Simulink block diagram of the controller is shown in the image below.
RC Car
For my latest project, I've been working on building my own RC car. The idea started with me wanting to learn how to work with RC transmitters. I started by building my own RC car from a simple chassis, but ended up buying a commercially available RC car and completely replacing all of the electronics with my own! That includes the battery, RC transmitter, ESC which was substituted by a high current motor driver and an Arduino nano MCU. To top it off, designed my own PCB board for power distribution as well as to eliminate some of the wiring. The image on top shows the latest version of the RC car and here's a brief video of it in operation.
Scroll to the bottom to see how it started out!
Using a chassis that I found on Amazon, I assembled the prototype car and outfitted it with an Arduino UNO, a l298n motor driver, and FS i6 radio transmitter and receiver. The transmitter I'm using has two analog sticks that can be used to pilot vehicle. I wrote Arduino code that maps the location of the stick to the PWM of the four motors on the car, allowing it to go forward and back, as well as make turns. To power everything, I used a 2200mAh 3S Lipo battery. I was happy with how smooth the car operated and the duration of the battery pack.
For the next stage, I challenged myself to tear down a commercial RC car and add my own components. This project required building a lot of electrical connections so to eliminate wiring and allow for an easy distribution of power I designed mw own PCB board to support the car. For the PCB, I drew the electrical schematic with EasyEDA and ordered the boards from JLCPCB. Both are shown below. I'm using the same 2200mAh battery to power everything, except I added 2 voltage regulators that can be clipped onto the PCB. These step the voltage down to 5V which powers everything except the motors.
I added a second voltage regulator which is optional for now, but it can power a Raspberry Pi which I hope to include for a live video upgrade. This has been a very rewarding project to work on so far. Prior to it, I had no PCB building experience and have never worked with implementing RC controls on my projects. The buggy is extremely responsive, drivers very fast and is a blast to control
Besides adding video capability, I'd like to work with Pythons TensorFlow to add some autonomous functionality as my next step.