As part of our upcoming project we needed to get a Power Wheels. Let me just say, owning a power wheels has been a dream of mine ever since I was three. I still know the jingle (granted its just the words power wheels over and over - but there's a beat to it you have to get right). My parents had an outstanding deal with my sister and I growing up that if they ever won the lottery they would by us a power wheels and in fact that deal still stands to this day.
We decided it wasnt a good decision though to just wait on my parents to win the lottery. So we did what every lottery loser does when they want cool stuff on the cheap - Craigslist. We found a nice man named Trent whose dog had gotten a hold of his kids power wheels and was willing to sell his kids dreams for the bargain price of $30. Needless to say I felt a little jipped that my parents couldn't part with $30 when I was a kid, but regardless, power wheels acquired.
Stay tuned to see what we do with a chewed up miniature F150 and a whole lot of modifications!
UDPATE: It's been brought to our attention that there's a lot of beer in the background of this picture we took at work and that's maybe not appropriate. Our company has beer at work; you're probably just jealous.
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With toy cars comes the concept of autonomous navigation.
ReplyDeleteAn effective way to do that is with LIDAR, but... that gets pretty expensive.
However, you can use SONAR.
Instead of using the traditional single-distance SONAR, you can process it a bit more like bats do. One emitter, multiple receivers, using the difference in the time of the amplitude peaks (and triangulation) to determine the position of objects.
As for an inexpensive LabVIEW-compatible controller to do this? No idea. Perhaps wireless DAQ? Or a single-board RIO?