Buzz

Buzz is built on the chassis of a remote-controlled car. The guts of the car have been ripped out and replaced with an NGW100 network gateway; a low-powered development board utilizing the Atmel AVR32 processor.

Connected to the board is a Pololu Motor Controller. This allows the LRF to control the speed of the car with ease. Two Pololu servo controllers have also been attached which provide accurate and reliable control of the steering and the arm movement.

The arm is controlled using seven servos. This high degree of freedom combined with some rather complex mathematics result in a very impressive and usable robotic arm. The gripper can pick up objects up to 100g in weight.

The car also shows off the LRF's Inertial Measurement Unit. Two single-axis gyroscopes and a 3-axis accelerometer all work together to figure out where the car is and where it has been.

Every aspect of the car has been developed using the LRF. The software has been developed on a standard x86 linux computer and cross-compiled for the AVR32 architecture. Because of the versatility of the LRF, should any components such as the motor controller break or fail, a replacement of any brand or model may be used with only minor code changes.