So, as with most of my projects it started out as a joke that got out of hand…
Our workshop is three cargo containers welded together, sat on breezeblock plinths, but until recently there was a gap in the floor. Just big enough to swallow a 13mm dropped in the worst possible place. I cursed my bad luck, and as I was in a hurry working on a project, but kinda wrote it off. Last christmas I had the daft idea to throw together a robot to head under the containers to rescue it however.
It started off with an old tracked RC toy I had, but that turned out to be way too fast, instead I settled on using a Rover 5 chassis I bought years ago and never did anything with.
Taiko Velocitrax, with StereoPi board and LIDAR.
Thankfully the “plate” I designed for the Velocitrax was intended to be able to be used as the basis to rapidly prototype robots and fit on the Rover 5 chassis quite happily.
Velocitrax and Rover 5 chassis, along with the robotics “plate”
Sadly the real world returned all too soon and I forgot about the project, only to rediscover it this Christmas with an extra year of experience under my belt and less burned out that last year. Relatively, anyhow 
Fast forward to this Christmas…
I thought I’d try building out a Unity based ROS controller using their ROS TCP Connector, it works a treat but I think this would be a solution for a dedicated robot rather than hacked together robot. For that I’ll be looking at writing a Joy message publisher for Foxglove Studio as I think it’ll be easier than developing something myself from scratch.
The hacked together version of the bot, rather than stereo cameras I have one facing forward on a tilt mechanism and another facing to the rear. The LIDAR is just used to give warning in case I’m about to drive in to one of the lower hanging beams that support the floor of the container.
I sent it on recon and actually found the damn spanner!
and because I’ve got attached to it, I’m rebuilding it before putting a gripper on the front and sending it back under the workshop to retrieve the spanner!
Currently finishing the design for the gripper, hopefully will be sending it on another mission over the next few days.
