[lrh9]

How are robots usually controlled, and could an existing motherboard/cpu/hard drive disk/RAM control a robot?

I know that a magnetic hard drive disk probably couldn't be used in a heavy duty robot. Too many moving parts, but a solid state disk might work. Would the other parts be able to stand up to the forces?

[Freddy]

I have seen that some people do basically use an existing PC to do the work.  But like you say there are some problems with that.  It depends a lot on what you want it to do I suppose.  You could use a laptop perhaps as apparently they have better shock prevention, but yeah to me the layman on robotics I would have thought SSD's would do the trick.

Art may have more knowledge on this than me, hopefully he will put in an appearance.  Also I know of someone doing this exact same thing on another forum, so let me know if you want me to dig out a link.

[lrh9]

Being the do it myself kind of person I am, I can't say that I'd really be interested in the person's exact process, but I'd definitely be interested in the experimental results.

Yes. There are problems. For one is the force problems that I mentioned. Then there are power issues.

Now what seemed to me like a more feasible solution to this attempt than regular ATX or mATX boards is the mITX boards that are out. They have a 6.7" x 6.7" form factor as compared to the mATX 9.6" x 7.4" to 9.6" x 9.6" and the ATX 12" x 9.6".

I saw a site building a robot with such a board. I'll have to dig it back up.

Couple that with a low power cpu/memory combo and it just might work for a while.

Edit: Another issue would be fan cooling vs. water cooling. With a moving robot, the fan might wear out or break and the water cooling wouldn't have that problem, but a water cooling system done wrong could get water on the components, especially in a moving robot.

[lrh9]

Just did some research into traditional robot controllers. It's the microcontroller.

[lrh9]

That's an ingenious idea about laptops. Laptop motherboards are designed for components that have a low power consumption and high shock resistance and are all ready designed for laptop batteries. You wouldn't even have to devise a power scheme.

You'd have to devise a custom mount, but that's true of all other motherboards unless you are putting the case right in the robot.

Edit: It'd probably be best to leave it in the case with the monitor. That would facilitate in the field work. You could purchase a new one and you wouldn't even have to worry about taking it apart unless you wanted to upgrade the memory in it or the cpu. (And by upgrade I don't mean something with necessarily more computing power, but with less energy consumption.)

[Art]

For most robot'ers, they start with the basic components then move onward and upward from there.

Look up "Basic Stamp" through Google or other robot based sites as it might serve your needs for getting started.

Some users experiment by programming EEPROMS (electrically erasable programmable read only memory) devices. No movine parts and they can be modified as needed. Great for establishing basics but for more advanced functions you'd need a bare bones OS and program. These could probably be contained on a Flash drive or similar device. Their capacities have grown quite large in recent times.

Robotics, as you might know, involves several disciplines like engineering, mechanics, electrical, electronic, structural and programming.

Actually, after all your work is done with the structure and mechanics, etc., it all comes down to the programming! Without it, you just have some asembled parts of metal, plastic or wood and nothing more.

Check out: www.trossenrobotics.com for a nice site and good people.

Also, there are many good books on robotics that can be obtained fairly inexpensively. Try www.amazon.com then go to BOOKS > USED BOOKS and search for Robots. Most are in great condition and can be had for a nicely reduced rate.

Good luck in your quest!

[lrh9]

Thanks for the information. I'm not going to start working with robotics immediately. I'm just generating the seeds for ideas later on.

[lrh9]

Somehow I came across Lego Mindstorms and I noticed that they use a processing brick that can control robots. Aside from this holding the seemingly good idea of having a standard interface and maybe interchanging different or upgraded processors, I was wondering if anyone here has personal experience with Mindstorms.