Do you could have a number of Nomadic Applied sciences N150 robots sitting round that you’re not certain what to do with? Chances are high that you don’t, as a result of these robots haven’t been manufactured for nearly 25 years, they usually have been area of interest machines at the moment. They have been initially focused at researchers learning robotic exploration issues, like the best way to get a robotic to resolve a maze. Today you are able to do that simply sufficient with an Arduino or Raspberry Pi and a cheap robotics platform, however within the Nineties, it required some innovative {hardware}.
Though you most likely wouldn’t have the nice fortune to have an N150 in your spare components bin, you’ll possible nonetheless discover YouTuber Clay Builds’ current video fairly attention-grabbing. Clay Builds managed to get his fingers on certainly one of these robots at an public sale. Because it got here with no documentation and the corporate that produced it has been out of enterprise for 1 / 4 of a century, the one approach to make any use of it was to first reverse engineer it. This generally is a very tough job below even the very best situations, however with the robotic in a nonfunctional state, it was all of the more difficult.
On preliminary inspection, the N150 has a rotating turret on the high that’s lined with ultrasonic sonar modules, which is smart for a robotic designed for exploration. A set of three wheels are on the underside of the robotic, which may be turned for steering and are pushed by a big brushed DC motor. Contained in the anodized aluminum physique of the robotic was a slew of PCBs — every ultrasonic module and wheel had its personal PCB, and several other bigger PCBs have been situated within the heart of the casing.
Clay Builds tears the robotic down and goes deep into the operation, offering data that’s helpful effectively past this explicit scenario. This information might be helpful to anybody that’s attempting to reverse engineer unknown {hardware}. In the midst of this teardown, Clay Builds discovered the motor management boards and, as a primary step in interacting with the {hardware}, linked an Arduino Professional Mini growth board to it. After some experimentation with sending totally different indicators to the inputs of the motor controller, he was in a position to drive a spare DC motor that he had available.
With that out of the best way, a set of very beefy batteries have been put in within the case to produce the robotic with the 24 volts that it requires for operation. Subsequent, Clay Builds wished to have the ability to interactively drive the robotic, so he wired a PlayStation controller to a Teensy 4.0 (because it helps the three.3 volt logic degree required by the controller) for enter. With a bit extra reverse engineering work, Clay Builds additionally discovered the best way to drive the motor that controls the steering, then wrote a easy program to translate the requested actions into indicators to ship to the motor controllers.
After reassembling the N150, Clay Builds was in a position to efficiently drive the robotic round his home utilizing the PlayStation controller. That was an enormous achievement, however there may be nonetheless quite a lot of work to do to know this robotic, so make sure to keep tuned for future movies.
N150, put together to be reverse engineered! (📷: Clay Builds)
Driving the motors with an Arduino Professional Mini (📷: Clay Builds)
Success! (📷: Clay Builds)