SERVO – February 2008 – Reviving an Androbot BOB # 1

SERVO February 2008

I enjoy restoring early personal robots to their original working condition. Most of my time is spent working on the HERO robots, but I always have other projects going on. One robot in particular — an early Androbot BOB prototype — was missing all of his brains and had been sitting for years as an empty shell. That was just not acceptable! Since the original electronics would probably never be found, I decided that I should at least use some of the extra robot parts from past projects to get BOB rolling again.

This first article in the series talks about control of the main drive motors.  It goes over different h-bridge designs and explains how to upgrade a Handyboard to enable it to control the larger DC motors in the BOB base.  It also covers a modification to the Handyboard itself to make it safer when used on larger robots.

Below is the link to the SERVO magazine where you can find the article:

http://www.servomagazine.com/index.php/magazine/issue/2008/02

Androbot BOB