Inspiration
Our ultimate goal was to have an autonomous robot send information of its surrounding for us to visually map into Unity. This project is a proof of concept for this.
What it does
A small robot follows the path drawn on a computer via Unity. The user uses swipes/gestures to draw the path on screen.
How I built it
The client-side of the project is built on Unity. C# is used to create the socket on the client-side as well as the path drawing interface, while Java is used to create the socket on the server-side that is in Raspberry Pi.To build the robot, we sent 4.5 volts to a circuit connected to motors that we built on a breadboard and attached the components to a wooden block with duct tape.
Challenges I ran into
Trying to connect to the Raspberry Pi via local Wi-Fi was a challenge to us as the IP addresses kept changing. Also, we had to build the robot using motors that moved at different rates, so we had to constantly adjust the motors so that both wheels moved at the same rate.
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
We're proud that we successfully created a project that combined software and hardware and utilizes TCP sockets, opening the ability to communicate world wide.
What I learned
We learned that transistors blow up very easily and that even simple tasks take a long time when sleep-deprived.
What's next for GestureBot
The next goal is to add sensors to the robot so it can detect obstacles and walls around it and have it move autonomously.
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.