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Unmanned Spaceflight.com _ Chit Chat _ My Rover Project

Posted by: James Sorenson Dec 26 2014, 12:29 PM

I debated to myself whether or not to post this here on UMSF at leased until it was complete, but I figured I'd share a little personal project that I've been working on. It still has a lot of work left to be done on it. Over the next several days and weeks I'll be wiring the drive motors to motor controllers and purchasing steering servo's for all six wheel's, and laminating the rovers top deck with carbon fiber. It sure is fun to work on it and a cool eye candy to look at as well!

https://flic.kr/p/qxqfAP

https://flic.kr/p/qxqfAi

Posted by: Seryddwr Dec 26 2014, 03:04 PM

Wow - a major piece of kit, that! Kudos! What are the dimensions? From the background, it looks about 70cm in length.

Posted by: James Sorenson Dec 26 2014, 05:29 PM

You're close! The top deck is 63 x 48 cm (25 x 19 inches). It has 5 inch wheels, which coincidently if I recall is around the same size as Sojourner's.

Edit: I have designed a set of stereo cameras with 12 position filter wheel's on a mast. It will ultimatly have an arm and hazard cameras in the future. Here is a video of me machining one of the filter wheel housings. This was a prototype. Progress lately slowed with the camera'a because of some CNC machine upgrades that I have been doing on my small mill.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKceSNngFMA
A video of the CNC g-code toolpath generation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EO7Ofq-QDhQ

Posted by: Tom Dahl Dec 26 2014, 10:20 PM

Looks like a very cool project, James! The videos are from about a year ago; may I ask how long you have been working on this in earnest? I bet you can't wait to see it driving and steering by itself. :-)

Posted by: James Sorenson Dec 27 2014, 12:06 AM

I started designing the camera's actually first before the rover about a year and a half ago, and the design of that is pretty much complete with the exception of the anti-backlash stepper and worm gearboxes for pointing the camera's. That I'm still working on the design. I actually didn't start designing the rover until around February and all through summer. I started building it around September. I have a 3D CAD rendering of the whole camera system excluding the pointing system, I can post that in a little bit. I've bee busy sourcing the right filters that I want. I have the camera boards, stepper motors for the pointing and actuating the filter wheels, as well as the stepper controllers for it. I just need to get the lenses and filters as well as fabricate everything. For me the fabrication is the simple part.

edit here are the 3D cad screenshots of the cameras.

https://flic.kr/p/qgNjYphttps://flic.kr/p/qgDM87 https://flic.kr/p/qy3wb4 https://flic.kr/p/pBdJUJ

Posted by: James Sorenson Jan 28 2015, 05:43 PM

This morning I did the first stationary benchtop drive of the rover. Drove an equivalent of 13 feet forward and backwards. I have made quite a bit of progress with the electronics and other things on the rover. Here is the video.

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=1030834536945598&l=6312204406552990104

Posted by: James Sorenson Jun 11 2016, 08:50 AM

Wow its been a long time coming with this project. Long periods of working on and off of it in my spare time. But it's been super fun! The rover itself is pretty much finished. It also has a finished 5 DOF robot arm but not installed, minus the tools that will be attached to its turret. Still aways to go to completely finish it's add-ons like it's cameras, but it keeps me busy and its not like im trying to make any Mars launch winodws or anything . Here are a couple of videos and some pictures of it that I have taken over the last couple of weeks.

https://www.facebook.com/JamesMichaelSorenson/posts/1326354767393572

https://www.facebook.com/JamesMichaelSorenson/videos/1327005067328542/
https://www.facebook.com/JamesMichaelSorenson/videos/1337973292898386/

Edit: here is a gif of the last video.