SpaceVacuum

SpaceVacuum
Participants	Giorg10
Skills	Electronics, Robotics, ROS
Status	Active
Niche	Yes
Purpose	Clean and tidy HAAHAHA space
Tool	No
Location	Around the space
Cost	Not a lot
Tool category	Electronics

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In the (false) hope that this will help keep the space cleaner, this project aims at performing a brain-transplant to one of the robot vacuum cleaners at the space to improve its ability to navigate and connect it to the space's IRC.

Plan

• Reverse-engineer the robot's PCB
• Replace the MCU with a custom controller
• Set up a Pi with ROS + nav-stack
• Write a ROS driver to link to said custom controller
• Make an initial 2D map of the space
• Write a ROS driver to act as a bot in the space's IRC

This should be enough to get some basic behaviour.

Extensions

Lost more could be done.

• Add charging pads, make a charging station so it can charge itself
• There are 3D cameras like the Kinect and D-Lite, these could be used to make/update a 3D map of the space.
• There is a horn, could be linked to a camera to horn at people that don't get out of the way.
• A camera on the front of SpaceVacuum that streams live on YouTube/Twitch
• Add your silly idea to this list

Progress

Currently busy with step 1, RE'ing the PCB.

Reverse-engineering

The robot's PCB is a very dense, and a 4-layer one... a bit of a PITA to RE, but it will slowly get done.

• MCU: STM32F030C8
• H-bridges: PT5126
• Comparators: LM393 (function not known to this day)
• Step-down DC-DC: A5268
• Battery: 3S Lithium (originally 3x 18650 @ 2.2 Ah)
• MOSFETs: STP4435

The bumper sensors are IR phototransistors (for durability, perhaps?) The motor encoders are also optical, and very high-precision (Hz / m: TBD)

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MCU pin-out

Pin	Function	Description
A14	USART2 TX	Used to flash the chip
A15	USART2 RX	Used to flash the chip
B7	Left motor IN-A	To IN-A of H-bridge of left motor
A10	Left motor IN-B	To IN-B of H-bridge of left motor
A9	Right motor IN-B	To IN-B of H-bridge of right motor
B2	Right motor IN-A	To IN-A of H-bridge of right motor
B10	Right encoder	Optical encoder of right motor