My first big project... I got the inspiration for this project while browsing videos on YouTube of ME/CpE thesis projects involving computer vision and autonomous robotics. My project isn't going to be anywhere near the scale of those, but the idea is to build my way up to that level eventually. As this will be my first project using an Arduino, and I'll be constructing the arm myself, I figure I'll start small. I'll be building a robotic "arm" which can rotate 180 degrees horizontally and vertically to follow a beam of light.
My initial plan was to build everything from scratch, and have no software involved at all. I would build a PWM (pulse-width modulator) to control the servo position using a 555 timer chip, and use a 339N IC as a comparitor. The 339N IC would compare the voltages of either the right/left, or up/down photo-resistors mounted on the "face" of the robot, and send a signal to the PWM accordingly. A little aggressive for the first go-round... While some day this may be a project to take on, once I started looking at the details of what it would take to get something like this built and functioning properly, I decided to enlist the help of my new best friend, the Arduino.
Using an Arduino for a project like this will cut the time to completion exponentially. If you haven't heard of, or don't know much about, Arduino, I highly suggest you check out the
Arduino website. With analog inputs, and digital outputs (that can also function as a PWM) already built in, most of the grunt work is already done. This did, however, add one more project to my list... Learn to program in C. While it's not necessary to be well versed in C to get started experimenting with the Arduino, it certainly will make life easier going into this with some background knowledge.
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