SixPotatoe is a stripped down, simple-to-build version of TwoPotatoe. In many ways it is the best performing of all of my robots. If TwoPotatoe is the Cadillac of these robots, then SixPotatoe is the Lotus sports car. It has the best power-to-weight ratio and the most refined balancing algorithms of any of the “Potatoe” robots. It is because of its simple construction and performance that I have created an Instructable so that others can build their own version. You can follow the tutorial on instructables.com and build a robot just like it. You can also read about it in this Sparkfun blog.
This page contains the following links for further information that will help people to build and modify it:
- Tuning – There are a number of constants that can be changed to modify the performance of the robot. This is a brief explanation for many of these constants.
- Autonomous Navigation – There some support for autonomous navigation in the current SixPotatoe Arduino code. With a few simple commends, you can program SixPotatoe to autonomously navigate over a prescribed course. This section explains how to do this.
- Modifications – There are a number of ways that SixPotatoe can be modified. This section describes the most likely of these and gives some advice on how to carry them out.
- Logging – SixPotatoe can record events internally so that they can be later played back and examined. This is useful for those who want to understand or modify SixPotatoes behavior.
Here is an early version of SixPotatoe. It is much more complex that the SixPotatoe described in the Instructable since it has a depth camera and an UP Board running Linux. On the other hand, the motors are running at a much lower voltage, making it not nearly as fast. Also, its weight is concentrated very low so it is not nearly as capable over difficult terrain. The weight distribution and wheels pretty much confine it to level surfaces.