“This robot uses 4 Sharp IR sensors to wander around the house and avoid running into things.
I was looking for a fun weekend project with parts I had around the house. In digging through my junk box, I found a track chassis I bought a while back on Amazon just because it looked cool. I figured I’d use it one day. Apparently, this was the day!
I thought an autonomous robot would be fun to build. I’ve built a few robots in my day with wheels or legs, but never with tracks. So this was my project!
Next I found an Arduino Mega and an old motor shield, so I was off to the races!
I mounted the Mega and the battery holder that came with the chassis using double-sided tape. Then I snapped on the motor shield. The shield can drive 2 DC motors using a handful of digital pins on the Arduino.
Now that I had a drive system, I needed sensors to keep the robot from running into things. Luckily, I had four Sharp IR sensors with 10-80cm range. I needed some way to position them in four directions and mount them to the robot, so I decided to build a sensor shield. I wired the sensors up on a blank shield board and mounted them using Gorilla Glue.”