The VRBot

The VRBot

Inspiration

Robots can go into many places people can't, but robot's can't understand their surroundings like people can. We thought that there we can have the best of both worlds; go anywhere a robot can, and see like a human.

What it does

This robot is controlled by a remote control and the camera on top of the robot is controlled by the user's head and the user sees what the robot sees. When the user turns their head, the robot's camera will turn with the movement of the user's head. This robot can go places people can't while still giving the exploration as if it was a human in it's place.

How we built it

We built the robot using 4 DC motors to control the wheels and an Arduino YUN board to control everything. We connected a platform made up of two servomotors where the camera will be put. We connected a PS3 controller to the phone that links with the Arduino board to send signals to it. And we made another phone act as the eyes that the person wears on their head to control the platform with the camera.

Challenges we ran into

One of the chalenges was getting the position of the eye-ware to send signals to the robot to control the spinning platform. Streaming video to a phone was also very challenging and is the part we spent most of our time on.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud that the robot moves and that the camera from the robot streams directly to the person's eyes to their phone. We learned a lot about accelerometers and getting data from them and about Android video streaming.