Introducing the Antbot
Photos: A very early Antbot prototype (July 2008). Video of this prototypeSide view. Overhead view.
The Antbot is a work in progress that furthers our goal of making robots affordable for educational uses, so that a robotics curriculum can become a realistic objective for High Schools and Jr. colleges.
By creating an affordable, accessible robotics platform, robotics can now become easily integrated into any existing school curriculum.
Using the Antbot Kit, you can build an autonomous robot, piece by piece, with excellent mechanical quality and good electronics quality, for roughly $200 to $500 in parts.
The basic package is already a very powerful robotics platform, with the Picaxe28 microcontroller on board. With it, you can start learning how to program it in BASIC and assembly language, non-interactively. It is also compatible with the 28 pin SX microcontroller from Parallax.
The Antbot is compatible with the Digi and ZigBee lines of packet radios and the basic model uses one to talk to the Picaxe at standard WiFi ranges. The best module will give you a 20 mile range!
In addition to the Picaxe, you can add on the Parallax Propeller in the main CPU slot. This is a very powerful 8-core microcontroller that can be used to teach parallel processing, machine vision and software implementation of video and audio outputs. The Propeller allows simultaneous processing of data from GPS, compass sensors, accelerometers and the like to enable the Antbot to navigate outdoors. A control console can be used to graphically interface with Google Earth and track or direct the Antbot in real time.