Robotics Articles

1. Tamiya ‘Toy’ Motor Testing

Adam Borrell, who posts under the username nexisnet on the Pololu forums, has performed a detailed series of experiments to determine how operating voltage affects the lifetime of the Mabuchi FA-130 motor, which is used in many small toys and robot projects.

Pololu Sample Projects

The following sample projects show examples of how to use Pololu products in fun and easy applications. Most of the projects are relatively simple because they are designed primarily to demonstrate basic principles of use or operation. Of course, you can use your imagination to do much more!

1. PIC-based, obstacle-avoiding robot

This project demonstrates how to use the Pololu round robot chassis and the Pololu micro dual serial motor controller with a Microchip PIC microcontroller to make a simple, obstacle-avoiding robot. The low-voltage features of the motor controller allow the robot to run off of a small, 3.6 V cordless phone battery pack. Read more…

2. Basic LEGO robot

This project is similar to project 1, but this time the chassis is made from LEGO, and a Parallax BASIC Stamp II controls the Pololu micro dual serial motor controller . Also, the circuit is built on a solderless breadboard instead of being soldered on a perforated board. Read more…

3. Controlling devices with the serial port and writing graphical interfaces

Many robots or robot components can be controlled with commands sent over a serial port. Here we show you how to write programs to control your robots, and we present a simple way to make graphical interfaces for your programs. Read more…

Customer Projects and Tutorials

The following examples show how our customers have used Pololu products in their robotics and electronics projects. Please contact us if you would like us to list your project here.

1. Using the Pololu Servo Controller in .NET

Colin K. has written a servo controller tutorial, complete with a C# example program.

2. Programming AVRs using the Mac

Michael Shimniok has written a guide on using a Mac to program AVRs. He specifically uses the Orangutan LV-168 and Orangutan USB programmer, but his instructions should apply to general AVR programming.

3. Controlling the SMC03A (3-Amp Motor Controller with Feedback) with LabVIEW

Roberto O. has created a demo showing how to control our SMC03A motor controller using LabVIEW. He provides a short introduction to his project in this forum post. He has provided the following files: smc03a_labview.zip (1279k zip) (1.2MB).

4. Colin K.’s The First Law

Colin K. has used our serial 8-servo controller as part of his entry, The First Law, in the Defcon Bots competition.

5. Tom’s 3kg Sumo Robot

Tom Saxton is using our Orangutan X2 robot controller as the brains of his 3kg sumo robot.

6. iRobot Create Personal Home Robot

Danh Trinh is using our 8-servo controller in his robot based on the iRobot Create platform and a mini-itx computer system.

7. Probotics America Safety Education Robots

David Jannke from Probotics America is using our TReX motor controller in his safety education robots. He also sent us a short video demonstration (2051k avi).

8. Motorsteuerung mit H-Brücke (338k pdf)

Wilke Technology has written an article (in German) that describes how to use our dual serial motor controllers with their BASIC-TigerTM computer module. The application note explains some of the theory behind H-bridges in general and then details the use of the Pololu motor controllers. The article and accompanying code are available at www.wilke.de (see application note 59 on the “Applikationen” page). You can also view a local copy of the article (338k pdf).