THIS
MONTH:
Sur veyor’s
Travels
FIGURE 1. THE SURVEYOR.
The folks at Inertia Labs may have
forever earned a celebrated place
in the memory of combat
robotics fans with their formidable
and uplifting creations like Toro, but
Alexander Rose and Reason Bradley
have also put their energies into other,
less destructive projects. One of their
new endeavors at Inertia Labs is as a
designer and distributor for the new
quad motor Surveyor SRV-1Q from
Surveyor Labs — a nifty little treaded
robot outfitted with a high quality
camera. Perhaps the most distinctive
detail about the SRV-1Q is that it
allows you to do your surveying
autonomously or over a wireless
network. How cool is that? With that
most tantalizing detail about the
Surveyor robot and its capability to be
controlled wirelessly over the Internet,
we were excited to see what this web
savvy robot had to offer.
received the base kit so that we could
make another bot. Two bots in one
article is a bit too crowded, so the
project base will have to wait for
another month.
At first blush, it is evident that the
Surveyor is one sophisticated bot. The
tough rubber treads give the bot a
rugged feel, and the solid frame
constructed from thick plastic and
machined aluminum is like Chuck
Norris walking into High Tea. The
elegant exterior hides four DC gearmotors with a 100:1 gear reduction
that gives the robot both hefty torque
and considerable zippiness. The robot
is also quite well equipped in the
sensor department. A high quality
camera takes center stage on the face
of the bot, and it is flanked by laser
pointers for range finding. And in
case those sensors don’t make the bot
aware enough for you, the fancy
printed circuit boards (PCBs) have
ports for additional sensors like
ultrasonic range finders.
The robot comes with an antenna
and a charger that imbues it with over
four hours of battery life. A clearly
labeled switch at the back of the bot
labeled ON, OFF, and CHARGE is also
a comforting sight. The robot radio is
Lantronix Matchport 802.11b/g WiFi,
and the robot can be teleoperated
from a distance of 100 m indoors,
and up to 1,000 m with a line of
sight. The bot makes use of three
layers of PCBs (Figures 2, 3, and 4),
but with the plastic headpiece holding
down the camera, the lower boards
are fairly difficult to reach. That,
however, shouldn’t be a major
concern. The topmost PCB on a fancy
red wafer is what will intrigue most
tinkerers, because it is this board
that possesses the spare ports for
additional sensors and other flights
of fancy. And to top it all off, the red
PCB is graced by the presence of a
nice Blackfin processor.
Let Your Robot
Do the Walking
The Surveyor robot can be
acquired in pre-assembled form, or
it can be bought as a kit that needs
to be put together. We received the
already built version, but we also
One Fish, Two Fish,
Red Fish, Blackfin
The Blackfin processor from
Analog Devices debuted circa 2001,
and it is designed specifically to
support open source operating
systems like Linux. This is great news
for tinkerers of a programming
persuasion, but the descendant of the
SHARC processor has something to
offer to more mechanical hobbyists,
as well. The Blackfin was designed to
SERVO 11.2008 21
