Recently I came across so many fun projects that keeps me very busy.
1. Quadcopter
this one is a tricky one. I am planning to do this from scratch so there will be a lot of maths study and research to be done about the electronics. I expect building this quadcopter could take me 8 to 12 months, covering areas on learning how to use the IMU, calibrate and filter the data from it, learn how to use the flight controllers (KK2.0 or Multiwii ro both), select parts, assembling and tunning, a lot of tests flights… Eventually I would really like to mount a camera on it (ideally a GoPro :-) ) and take some awesome videos of Brighton and Hove. The only worry I have is neighbor might complaint about health and safety… This would be my number 1 or 2 project on the list.
2. DIY Remote Controller
Much like a RC transmitter, but with more functionality and precise control. Ideally can be used by the quadcopter and hexapod/quadruped robot projects. thinking of getting some 3-axis joystick for control, would be so awesome! This is partly inspired by Zenta’s robot controller. This would definitely be my number 1 or 2 project.
3. Quadruped Robot
I have actually started this robot a few months back, Kind of dropped it half way through. I was quite annoyed by the design of the Lynxmotion robot legs, servo movements are restricted and requires a lot of work to try and avoid this. I don’t know when to re-start this project, maybe one weekend before September. I will try improving the trot gait, enabling gait-transition, and putting an IR detector on it.
4. Wall-E robot with Raspberry Pi
An improved version of the previous wall-e robot, that solely uses the Arduino as the MCU, and requires a laptop to be connected for advance functionality like object recognitino. In this version, I would be able to use the RPi for all the stuff, including speech/face/object recognition, even controlled and video stream over internet on a browser. I have already started some work on the face/color tracking.
5. Improve Version of Hexapod Robot
After successfully built a hexapod robot, I am pretty confident that I can improve the algorithm and build a much better, lively robot. One big change would be the legs and body, and I would probably go for the Phoenix frame. and use raspberry Pi to do some cool stuff with it, and finally implement terrain adaption. Start time pretty much depends on my visa situation. Most likely to be after November.