Serving up the Robotic Claws

To carry the Sea Perch to its mission deployment site, you will equip the Sea Hawk deck with Robotic Claws. The claws hold the Sea Perch in place by its grappling poles until you are ready to send your Robosub on its dive.  You can order the claws from Sparkfun here:  http://www.sparkfun.com/products/10332

Ideally you can mount the claws with three servos to get three axes of motion, but that adds to cost and complexity. To compromise, we eliminate the swivel servo at the base and fix the "arm" of the robot in place. This means that at the end of the mission the Sea Perch pilot must carefully drive the Robosub into the docking bay. Once it is all the way forward in the docking bay, the large "wrist" servo, which moves up and down, turning on the X axis, can be used to make the open claw descend oover the grappling pole.  Then the little servo which controls the opening and closing of the claw itself can be closed, gripping the pole.

Our design calls for two claws, one on each side of the Sea Hawk.  You can save time and money by running them simultaneously in parallel motion, or you can experiment with having independent control of each claw.

Each servo of each claw NEEDS ITS OWN BATTERY! They run off of 5 V, so you can use 4 battery holders that each have 4 AA batteries in them.  If you try to run two servos off of the same battery you will experience issues where sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. To avoid that , give each servo its own battery.  You hook the positive and negative wires from the servo to the battery and the signal wire to a mini-breadboard, then from there to one of the pins on your Arduino.

What we do is to control the two claw Servos from the Adafruit Motor Shield in the Sea Perch control box. the Adafruit has two locations for Servos on it.  This way you send a command to the Adafruit shield to open the claws, dropping the Perch and allowing you to start driving it with the same Motor Shield, using the down propellor only. We hook up the to large wrist servos to pins on the Arduino in the Sea Hawk control box. This way, when the Sea Perch returns from its mission, you use the Adafruit to control its motors to get it in docking position and the Sea Hawk Arduino to control the wrists so they can move up and down over the grappling poles. When the position is right you turn off the Sea Perch motor and use the Adafruit to close the claws.  Simple? Is anything in robotics simple?

 

Once the Sea Perch is "docked and locked" in the Sea Hawk you use your bluetooth Android phone with Amarino to drive the pair back to shore.

Arduino Sandwhich 2: The Sea Perch

The Sea Perch Arduino Sandwhich sits in a similar Otter 2500 box on the bow of the Sea Hawk.  Its stack is only three boards high for now.

As with the Sea Hawk sandwhich, an Arduino Uno R3 forms the bottom layer. It also needs its own power source (a 9 V battery through the barrel plug; note that the battery is in a separate Otter Box and note that you don't want to use a normal 9 V battery brick because it won't last long enough for the mission and when it starts to get weak the logic will go crazy and your robosub won't behave properly. Use a NiMH hobbyists 9V battery pack!)

The second part of the stack is the ADAFRUIT MOTOR SHIELD whch comes in a kit from Adafruit and which you will solder together yourself.  It is the only inexpensive motor shield we know that can handle up to 4 motors and 2 servos, making it ideal for the Sea Perch.  Note that the Adafruit Motor shield needs its own battery source, which should be an 11.1 V to 12 V hobby battery.  Make sure you remove the jumper on the shield so that you  isolate the power from the Arduino board because you DO NOT want to power the motor shield from the Arduino power supply!

 ONCE AGAIN: MAKE SURE YOU REMOVE THE JUMPER ON THE JUMPER PINS  SHOWN ABOVE SO THAT YOU CAN USE A SEPARATE POWER SUPPLY FOR THE MOTORS AND A SEPARATE POWER SUPPLY FOR THE ARDUINO. The Adafruit Shield comes with the little black plastic jumper in place here and this would make both the Arduino and the Motor Shield use the same power supply (either plugged in to the terminals on this shield or into the barrel jack of the Arduino).  The problem with this is possible motor noise interference and erratic behavior on the part of the Arduino.  Safest is to remove the jumper so your Adafruit Shield looks like ours in the picture above.   You can read more about the topic here: http://forums.adafruit.com/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=26226

 

The top of the Stack is an Xbee shield. We recommend the one from Sparkfun because it plugs right into the stackable headers and will work (should work!) right out of the box without any configuration or wiring.  It draws its power from the Arduino board and once you  have loaded up our "running the Sea Perch from the computer keyboard" sketch onto the Arduino and you plug the Xbee USB dongle into your computer  and open the serial monitor in the Arduino IDE it should work as though you are connected to the board, only wirelessly.

With this configuration you should be able to pilot your Perch wirelessly from your laptop, safe and dry on the shore!

Arduino Sandwhich 1: The Sea Hawk

 Each Otter Box 2500 on the bow of the Sea Hawk contains a different "Arduino Sandwhich".  An arduino uno R3 board is common to both of them, but the shields on them differ because of the different needs of the Sea Perch and Sea Hawk.  

The beauty of using Arduino Shields is that they mount piggy back onto the Arduino and the pin assignments are such that you don't lose the functionality of the Arduino board (the stackable female headers make it so that when you plug a wire into the analog or digital inputs on the top board you are effectively plugging into the same pin on the Arduino down below) and generally, for the specific function of the Shield, it is already wired to accept logic from and send logic to the Arduino. So using shields makes things very compact and plug and play.

The Sea Hawk uses 4 boards for its basic functionality. They fit inside the Otter Box 2500 and leave just enough room for wiring.

The Arduino Uno R3 is at the ground floor of the stack.  It needs its own 9 volt power supply (at the barrel plug shown in the middle top of the picture). The grey box is a USB connector for uploading the programming code (called an Arduino "sketch") to the board. You load it once  before you send the Sea Hawk out to sea...

The second layer of the "sandwhich" for the Sea Hawk is the Arduino Motor Controller, found at Radio Shack.  This requires its own 11 to 12 volt power supply to run the motors.

The next thing we put on the Sea Hawk stack is a GPS Shield.  This enables the Sea Hawk to report where it is as it carries the Sea Perch to its mission location,.

The top of the stack is an Arduino Prototyping Board with a MiniBreadboard adhered to the space between the female headers.  Note the orientation of the breadboard; you need to mount it so that the long side of the rectangle is between the headers so that you can mount the bluetooth Bluesmirf wireless chip and the Navigational compass properly (make sure that the pins of these devices are in breadboard holes that are not electrically connected!!)

The bluetooth module on top allows us to drive the Sea Hawk from our Android phones using the Amarino apk.   We need to keep the Prototyping shield with the Bluesmirf and compass on top so that we can wire them to the Arduino female headers. Unlike the motor shield and the GPS, which are internally wired through their header pins to the Arduino, the prototyping shield merely provides a pass through for the arduino pins and a breadboard; you have to wire the breadboard to the pins to get them to talk.

Systems Integration: Putting it all together

The complete Sea Hawk/Sea Perch configuration (shown without wires or zip ties)

In this section you will learn how the Sea Hawk/Sea Perch platform is configured.

 The Sea Hawk Skin, made of two layers of corrugated plastic, is zip tied to the endskeleton.

 The hacked Sea Perch docks inside the opening in the Sea Hawk with the grappling poles to the rear.

Four large otter boxes are placed on the Sea Hawk deck. The ones on the wings, shown in yellow, contain the batteries (each yellow box has a 9V battery for the Arduino microcontroller, a 11.1 V battery for the propellor motors and 2 6 V battery packs for extra servos.. In this way the contents of the yellow boxes are identical.)

 The otter boxes on the front deck, shown in red,  hold the Arduinos and their corresponding motor shields and wireless transceivers.  The one on the starboard side we designate for the Sea Hawk.  The one on the port side we designate for the Sea Perch.

 In the artist's rendering above, two Arduino Unos are shown sitting on top of the Otter boxes they will eventually go in.

The rendering above gives a closer look at the relative sizes of the microcontrollers and the otter boxes.

In the rendering above we shown the beginning of the "Arduino sandwhich" that will go in each box. The Arduino on the left has an Adafruit Motor Shield stacked on it.  This is identified by the three 16 pin IC chips on the board. The one on the bottom and the top are Dual "H-bridge" motor controllers, each one corresponding to a separate channel or "bridge" that can take two motors and up to 1.2 amps current. The specifications say, "4 H-Bridges: L293D chipset provides 0.6A per bridge (1.2A peak) with thermal shutdown protection, 4.5V to 25" The Adafruit also has connectors for up to two servos and so it can be used to run the robotic claws that hold the Sea Perch in place. We've chosen this shield for the Sea Perch because it can handle all three Sea Perch motors and the robotic claws, albeit running at different times so as not to overload the board. The specs say, "
Up to 4 bi-directional DC motors with individual 8-bit speed selection (so, about 0.5% resolution)
Up to 2 stepper motors (unipolar or bipolar) with single coil, double coil, interleaved or micro-stepping. 2 connections for 5V 'hobby' servos connected to the Arduino's high-resolution dedicated timer - no jitter!"

We are using 3 Jameco bi-directional 0.6A  DC motors for the Sea Perch and 4 servos; two of the servos (the one's opening and closing the claws) will be run off of the Adafruit, drawing their 5V power from the same 11.1 Volt battery that powers the Sea Perch motors. The two other servos, controlling the 'wrists' of the robotic claws, will be run from pins on the Arduino board and require their own battery sources (a separate battery pack for each servo).

On the right we see the begining of a motor shield for controlling the Sea Hawk propeller motors. This shield is not yet populated with all its electronic components and is used for illustration purposes only.

 Above is a picture of the Adafruit motor shield mounted on the Arduino and connected to some of its possible motors and servos.  The adafruit comes as a kit and must be assembled by the student (a great learning experience).  The kit can be ordered here:
http://www.adafruit.com/products/81
Instructions for building the motor shield can be found here:
http://www.ladyada.net/make/mshield/solder.html
The picture shows a green shield, my rendering shows a red shield (reminiscent of Spark Fun) but the real kit now comes in blue! Just sayin...

Below are some pictures of some of the infrastructural finishes for a floating moving craft:

Here the motor mounts have been added to the Sea Perch at the 3 Tee positions.

It is a bit easier to see from the side.  Note that the motor mounts are 3" pieces of 1/2 inch PVC with the top part of the last two inches cut out so the motors can be taped to them with duct tape.

We add the same motor mounts to the back Tees of the Sea Hawk endoskeleton.

At sunset, in the evening light, it the contrasting shadows make it easier to make out how the motor mounts are cut.

This picture was also taken when the sun was setting in the  virtual world. You can clearly see how the motor mounts look and their ideal orientation.

The Sea Perch docked into the Sea Hawk with their motor mounts attached and with the Sea Hawk Skin attached.

The Sea Hawk frame with the two side bottle pontoons.

Here we see the PORPOISE-pimped Sea Perch with its motors attached and the  Sea Hawk with its motors attached. In this Blender file I didn't bother to add the wires or the electrical tape that we use to strap the motors (in their film canisters) to the motor mount. We also see here the insertion of the 2 liter water bottles into the wing holders.  I haven't bothered to show the mesh tangerine bag that we use to zip tie them to the wings, nor the zip ties themselves. Use your imagination! 

Here is a rear view of the motors and the side water bottle floats. It shows that the Sea Perch can help drive the Sea Hawk; in fact you could forget the motors on the Sea Hawk and just use the Sea Perch to drive itself and the Sea Hawk into position, letting the Sea Hawk just float around while the Sea Perch dives, but how fun would that be (not!). Besides, the Sea Perch motors are generally too weak to move the Sea Hawk very fast or far so all they can really do is give  a boost.

Here is the same angle as above but with the Sea Hawk skin added and the motos removed.

Here is the same picture as above, but with the Sea Hawk deck skin and the motors attached..

The skin and motors added but the bottles removed.

The Sea Hawk motors are twice as powerful as the Sea Perch motors, but their set up (wiring and water proofing by sealing  with electrical tape and  placing in a film or pill canister  with toilet bowl wax) is identical.  

 

The only exception is that we save time by buying propellers that can be mounted on the shaft of the motor with a small Allen screw. We buy them in hobby shops.  They look like this:

When buying propellers, MAKE SURE YOU GET A LEFT PROPELLOR AND A RIGHT PROPELLOR.  Otherwise your Sea Hawk will go around in circles!  Craft with two propellers use a principle called “counter-rotation” in which the propellers spin in opposite directions (but always with dual forward thrust or dual backward thrust) so that the craft can go straight and not be biased by the direction of turn of the propellor.

For more info on this principle see

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-rotating_propellers

A top view of the Sea Perch/Sea Hawk hybrid with the 4 Otter Box 2500 series mounted.  In this picture the Arduino boards and their motor shields are sitting on top of the boxes they will go in.  In real life they would be inside the Otter boxes, safe from the elements!

In this rendering we add the 1 gallon milk jug to the prow of the ship.  Place it with the handle facing down and zip tie the handle of the jug to the PVC pipe beneath it.  You need to have some flotation in the front of your ship as the side wing bottle pontoons will not support the weight of the front.  If, after you have put the batteries and controller boards on the Sea Hawk the front rides too high in the water you can try using a half gallon milk or orange juice jug (with a handle for the Zip Ties) instead.  Or you can put some water in the gallon milk jug to precisely adjust its buoancy.  Or you can put a weight (a mast head ? A wooden mermaid?) on the prow of the ship.

No, these aren't imperial star cruisers on their way to blast the rebel alliance on Endor, these are the two "Arduino sandwhiches" you will be using. The one on the left is an Arduino Uno with an Arduino Motor Shield (which you can pick up at Radio Shack for 35 bucks) for running the Sea Hawk motors.  The one on the right is the Arduino Uno with an Adafruit Motor Shield for running the Sea Perch.

Here are the motor shields seen from the top. I did my best to populate them with the visible chips and connectors but left out all the tiny surface mounted resistors, capacitors, voltage regulators etc.  They won't be necessary for following the tutorial, so why bother putting them in?

Hooking up the Batteries:

This image shows how the batteries would be hooked up if they were floating in outer space. But they aren't.

Here is how the 12V batteries that power the motors are hooked up to their respective motor shields.

Note that the Adafruit motor shield, used for powering the Sea Perch Motors, hooks up to the screw terminal on the side.  Make sure and observe polarity so you don't blow things up!

Note that +M (for positive) and GND (for ground) are marked above the screw terminals on the circuit board.

For the Arduino Motor Shield you run the 12V battery wires into the right most set of screw terminals along the row. But BE CAREFUL! You must read the polarity silkscreened on the board.  In this case, with the board oriented the way we have it,  Vin (or Voltage In, which stands for +)  is ABOVE the GND terminal.  That is why in our 3D rendering above the red and black wires from the battery CROSS.  It can be misleading because the other screw terminals, which go to the motors of the Sea Hawk, have the negative above the positive.

In this close up you can see how the battery wires hook up to the Arduino Motor Shield.

Our next series of pictures will show how the motors are hooked up to the Motor Shields. Stay tuned!