Sunday, February 19, 2012

Dual crickets mounted on, and powered from the iRobot!

Up to now, determining the orientation of the iRobots required the use of the vision based camera system. This was because each iRobot had only one cricked. The solution is simple: mount an additional one!

Additionally to prevent the rise in battery usage, we decided to evaluate the possibility of powering them using the iRobot battery. Using a simple circuit Kees Slinkman designed for us, the crickets now turn on and off with the iRobots and do not require any batteries anymore!

Pictures of the iRobot with two crickets mounted:

Top view of the iRobotFront/Top view of the iRobot