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Surveyor Robot Gets Even More a-TRACK-tive

Okay, so it's a bad pun or play on words, but we just couldn't pass up the opportunity. And, honestly, we really feel that by adding a set of powerful tracks to an already neat robot, Surveyor has made the SRV-1 even more practical, interesting, and attractive for robot and R&D experimentors.

 

We had the opportunity to test the original SRV-1 design a couple of months ago, and were really impressed its functionality (see links below).

Since that time, Howard Gordon - Surveyor's founder and guiding light, hasn't stopped adding to and improving the robot. And, at least so far, he hasn't increased pricing, so his customers benefit from the significant improvement in price/performance.

One of Howard's most recent improvements to the robot was to implement a track drive system. The original design, which we believe is still available for sale, was based on two active wheels driven by Solarbotics motor assemblies, and one passive idler wheel. That design worked very well during our testing, though we could see that other people with thick carpets, rough tiles, or other complex surfaces to challenge the robot might not be as satisfied as we were.

Howard seems to have tackled and solved that problem very effectively with his new robot design. 

 The tracked SRV-1 model includes all the functionality
 and performance of the original with much better mobility.

 The tracked SRV-1 robot can roll across carpet, up a 40 degree ramp, and
 explore your sofa.

To test the new tracks, Howard positioned a piece of sanded plywood at a 40 degree angle between his carpeted floor and a couch. The robot rolled easily across the carpet, made the transition to the ramp without even slowing down or missing a beat, trucked right on up the ramp, and off onto the couch.

Related links:

Robot Journal Entry - SRV-1 Tracked Base

Surveyor Corporation Website

SRV-1 Review

Posted by Lem on April 21, 2006 | Permalink | Email this post

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Comments:

The new tracks look great, but I think the main "a-TRACK-tion" is the vision system. There are already so many inexpensive and functional robot bases out there. For me, at least, developments in the vision hardware and software would be far more exciting. (Just my two-cents).

Posted by: human | Apr 21, 2006 11:55:20 PM

Looks good and a basic atom module to boot ! hey theres that lego sneaking in again lem....sprocket

Posted by: sprocket2cog | Apr 22, 2006 12:20:49 AM

thanks for the comments and the original post. it's true that the most interesting aspects of this robot are its sensors, connectivity and computing capacity, but we didn't want those features to be limited by the mobility of the motorized base. now that we've thoroughly addressed that issue, we'll shift our focus back to firmware development.

Posted by: howard gordon | Apr 22, 2006 6:42:17 AM

i wish i could bye the blue prints for the Mobile Surveillance Robot because the prises are just to high for me (I'm 16) but i really want one and the soft where is open source for the PC because i read that some where.

so if any one knows Howard Gordon's e-mail address pleas let me know then i can ask him if i could bye the blue prints or if he has any kits so i could build my own.

my e-mail address is ross123540@gmail.com

so Howard if you are reading this let me know. lol

Posted by: Ross Harrison | Jun 28, 2006 8:00:33 PM

well,cool!How can I get one? I like it!

Posted by: Beareye | Oct 28, 2006 8:19:01 PM

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