Ceruleanplains.com - Amateur Robotics Project Journal

Welcome to my site! This site features personal projects and concept developments for robotics and automation. Included are a number of trial & error discussions, lessons learned, as well as some indication of level of effort and conscientious design. Its objectives are to highlight my work and share my successes and failures with others. I'm a member of the Washington DC Metropolitan Robotics and Automation Group and am a passionate roboticist interested specifically in remote sensing technologies and platforms.

Featured Projects:

Robot Project Log (2007-Present) Maintenance of day-to-day activities in the robot world and ideas I have or project actions that don't directly impact on project but many. This includes RC car concepts, solving the Wumpus problem, tracking developments in industry, and the PS2 controller H-bridge project for utilization across many platforms. It also includes links to various sub-systems applications such as sensors, power, thermal, structures, and control as well as a favorite set of references. The first rule of engineering is to research to see if someone already solved the problem - being original doesn't mean you have to be different.

Parallax Boe-Bot (2007) Kit Architecture used with multiple sensors including IR, whiskers, photoresistors, and the PING ultrasonic ranger. Used Parallax's BoE-Bot literature as well as the Smart Sensor & Applications texts both by Andy Lindsay.

ABCbot (2008) - A Boe-Bot Clone using the Arduino MCU with IR and photoresistors as sensors. This was a home grown concept using the structure of the Boe-Bot but using a different microcontroller - the ATMEL based Arduino.

Squidlian (2008) - The first underwater ROV project with LED lights, USB camera, VB.NET controls, compass, voltmeter, relay card, on-board power. Many of the subsystems were validated concepts and designed to fit inside this structure; however, it was decided to abandoned this design to work on lighter faster building items to get them into the water faster and learn more. The front end shown here is expected to be reused in the Blinky camera-on-a stick inspection tool.

Inky (2009) Largely used the design notebook from Build Your Own Underwater Robot and inspired by the SeaPerch student design competition in April of 2009 (I was a judge), I decided to re-start small. Inky 2.0 was completed in July of 2009 with Playstation 2 control and 3 custom half bridge motor drivers.

Blinky (2009) Concept adaptation of the SeaFox with the Camera-on-a-stick project in Build Your Own Underwater Robot and the initial design intent of the Squidlian, Blinky is a test-bed for lighting and video components in the pool and in the muddy water of the Potomac.

Hummerbot (2009) Autonomous Speedway entrant into the 2009 Autonomous Robot Speedway Competition (ARSC). Hummerbot is an inherited design with the DC/MD/VA robotics club from 2008 and modifications made to improve upon its last year's 1st place run.

Clyde (2009) More advanced test bed than Inky for rugged construction practices. Vehicle is to experiment in pitch control, on-board camera, CPU / on-board MCU technologies, and experiment with higher thrust propulsion techniques.

Fortune The Game (2010) Experiment in building A.I. opponents, multiplayer interfaces in an online card game combined with an asset management system.