New Robotics Project – SunRover Solar Powered Robot

 

What is SunRover?

SunRover is a tracked solar powered robot designed to move around and explore the area while sending back reports, tracking weather, managing a power budget tightly and providing a platform for testing new sensors and equipment as they become available.

The major subsystems are shown above.   It takes a lot of thought to put together a good block diagram.  You make a lot of design decisions that might be difficult to change later in the design.   Here is a list of the major system decisions that we made from the SunRover block diagram:

• Use a Prebuilt Track and Motor controller system
• Solar Powered system
• Solar Panels will be shifted from one subsystem to another according to demand and task set.   A solar panel multiplexor!
• Two major computers:  Raspberry Pi 2 for higher levels of control and an Arduino for power management and turning devices and sensors on and off
• Dual WiFi communication Paths Raspberry Pi / Arduino
• SunRover control panels using RasPiConnect

That is a lot of design decisions made on a very high level.  Next, a quick explanation of each of the subsystems of SunRover and then we will next dive into the motor controller and the power subsystem in our next posting on the SunRover design.

Below is a picture of the base TRex Track unit with the batteries installed.

Here is a picture of SunRover with the equipment bay installed on the track. No solar panels yet!