San Diego Space Society

AstroLynx Project Update

Posted by Adrian Clausell in Projects on January 10, 2010

[Editor's note: Adrian did an amazing job constructing our new AstroLynx rover, a Lynxmotion robotics platform donated to The Mars Society - San Diego by Project ASTRO. The rover, a telepresence rig intended for outreach presentations, was presented to SD Space at the December program meeting.]

This is the final development update for the AstroLynx rover. The rover is now fully operational. With a temporally very cheap 2.4 GHz 9V battery wireless camera wire tie-clip attached, it has now finished its first remote-controlled “exploration” of my back patio. Some video:

The camera platform, as you can see from the video, tracks the Y axis of the gripper and also has an independent ~140° left-right panning angle. The system has a set of redundant double batteries for the motor drive, one main 2800 mAh @ 12V (2 x 6V 2800 mAh’s in series) and a backup 12V 1800 mAh battery. With these it should be good for more than 2-3 hours steady run time. The RC receiver, gripper, and camera pan/tilt servos are run with the remaining third 6V 2800 mAh battery. A second battery position at this site is available for a future 6V backup placement. Charging is pretty quick (less than 2 hours) and takes place when both circuits are off and dual SmartChargers are plugged into the charging plugs on the main deck.

This current configuration now leaves free an available 12V 1800 mAh battery to run a decent future camera and transmitter to be placed externally on board at a later date.