Cell phone controlled rocker-bogie suspension type rover with a scooping arm

Abstract

This paper presents a way to build a cell phone controlled rocker-bogie suspension type rover with a scooping arm. This rover can swap between autonomous and manual control states. It has a wireless camera onboard which transmits videos to a nearby laptop with a range of 100 feet. As well as an ultra-sonic sensor which is mounted on a B0 motor to help the sonar rotate in place to detect and avoid obstacles on all 3 sides. It also houses a samsung 3200 mobile phone along with the Atmega32 board with 6 onboard drivers so that it can be controlled by a cell phone by the human operator through the DTMF technique. The scooping arm is attached to the rear portion of the rover and a B0 motor controls the scooping operations. Here the rover continues moving straight until an obstacle has been detected by the sonar. The sonar then turns left to see if there are any obstacles to the left, if there are no obstacles then the rover turns left. If there is an obstacle then it sees right, if there no obstacles then the rover turns right. However if there are obstacles then the scooping arm scoops some rock samples onto the body of the rover and the rover turns 180 degrees backwards and the process repeats. If at all at any point the human operator watching what the rover is seeing wishes to control it, he can call the cell phone stationed on the rover and control all actions of the rover and swap back when done.