1970's Robot

[Stray Electron]

   
    Well that is what the code was supposed to do. When I was examining the hex code in the book, I noticed several typos, including missing instructions, and instructions that didn't exist.

  LOL! I remember that book and if I recall correctly it published by TAB. All of their books were full of mistakes!

   I still have a Heathkit Hero robot packed away in my yet to do projects.

[NiHaoMike]

Word of warning about the FPGA.  Unless you have some serious development knowledge about FPGAs, you are better off using a mid range microcontroller.  Any logic you have on your PCB, though can be coded onto an FPGA effectively, that same logic can be software coded as well.  A 16 or 32 bit PIC/Atmel MCU will have multiple ADC inputs and a C compiler development language behind it, not to mention that such MCU's are <5$.

I would suggest a 32 bit microcontroller that supports FreeRTOS. Probably an ESP32 which would also give you wireless capabilities. Or go up to some mid/high end embedded Linux platform and get machine vision.

[Omega Glory]

I seem to remember reading this book.  Is this the one that had a charging station the robot would return to?

I believe the book did have a discussion about that, but it was it wasn't implemented. However in the book "How to Build Your Own Self-Programming Robot" by David L. Heiserman, also published the same year by TAB, I believe that was incorporated.

   
    Well that is what the code was supposed to do. When I was examining the hex code in the book, I noticed several typos, including missing instructions, and instructions that didn't exist.

  LOL! I remember that book and if I recall correctly it published by TAB. All of their books were full of mistakes!

   I still have a Heathkit Hero robot packed away in my yet to do projects.

Oh yeah, there were a lot of small mistakes which stumped me for a very long time. At some point I want to write up an errata page for anyone else who might try to build the project. Still, it has been my favorite book on robotics to date.

Bravo!    Excellent work.

Here's a short video clip of the robot pet avoiding obstacles. I've been silent for 4 years because of college, but for senior design I decided to work on a new and improved version called "Pet on a Chip" where everything is placed on a single FPGA. Now I'm updating the documentation for the original project and will soon document the new project as well. Better footage of both should be coming out this summer.

Word of warning about the FPGA.  Unless you have some serious development knowledge about FPGAs, you are better off using a mid range microcontroller.  Any logic you have on your PCB, though can be coded onto an FPGA effectively, that same logic can be software coded as well.  A 16 or 32 bit PIC/Atmel MCU will have multiple ADC inputs and a C compiler development language behind it, not to mention that such MCU's are <5$.

I've actually finished the projected already. It has a custom CPU, sonar controller, integral motor speed controller, UART, counter/timers, and a 640x480 80-column text mode VGA graphics card. I've also written a custom 2 pass assembler for it with nice features like symbolic expressions, definitions, and all sorts of useful directives. I'm just finishing up the documentation for it, and after my final exams this month, I'll post it! I know it would make a *lot* more sense to just put the thing on a cheap microcontroller, but it has been a dream of mine to design my own CPU and learn about FPGAs, so that's why I took that route, even though it's not at all practical.

[Omega Glory]

For the benefit of readers in the future, a full thread on the new version of the robot can be found here: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/pet-on-a-chip/.

[vk6zgo]

Awesome work, sir. Very impressive! Yikes: it has been 37 years since I wrote that book and built the robot pet. I am glad that you made up (in ingenuity and persistence) for my shortfalls in explanation and design.

Now, of course, "consumer robotics" is a lot easier, enabled by the spiral of miniaturization and exponentially greater processor power. But wa-ay back in the 70's, it was a new world 

You can bet, for instance (as you found), that byte-by-byte hex assembly command entry as a way to load programs would be as quaint (and painful) today as doing Morse code for ham radio. If I were working on a Robot Pet 2.0 today, you know it'd be driven by a Raspberry Pi or the like, coded in Python, loaded over Bluetooth. But the raw mechanics and electronics would remain the challenge.

Again, kudos for your success! It looks great. You have sharpened your toolset well. What project is next?

Lots of people use Morse code for ham radio!

[james_s]

You deserve some kind of prize for giving us an update after 4 years!

I was expecting to see one of those  spam posts from a brand new account at the bottom once I realized this was a 5 year old thread.