Under the name of Robo-Mobile, this homemade wheeled robot is designed to be useful and funny to play with. Its platform is large enough to host all the electronics, but not too big for the micro gearmotors used. The final project has 20 x 20 centimeters.
On the robot side, for communication was incorporated an Arduino Bluetooth compatible shield. The shield is an Adafruit Bluefruit Shield, which is full enough to control via Android smartphone the wheels of the robot.
Four wheels powered by four motors are moving the mobile platform, while the robotic arm can be controlled to grasp different size objects.
With two independent parts waiting for control (the chassis and the arm), the management system was also divided in two parts. One controller is used to control the chassis via Android app, while the arm is designed to mimic the movements of a dummy robot arm.
Three microcontroller boards were incorporated in this project. One Arduino Uno microcontroller is used to control the arm, one Uno is used to control the mobile platform, and another one is used for the dummy robot arm.
For the Android application was used the MIT’s App Inventor able to design and program your own application.
The Robo-Mobile is the perfect mobile platform for competitions and to start making a robot engineered with remote control via Android smartphone and able to grasp and move objects.