As always, here are some pictures from the test drive!
Obviously, there’s still a lot of room for improvement in many different areas. For example, while testing the robot, I noticed that the suppression tends to hang a little bit low.
Figure 11. Suspension detail while the robot is moving. Notice that the front of the body is low above the ground.
While this is not a major concern, it shows that the springs inside the suppressors are a bit too soft. Using tougher springs, the robot’s body would be higher, and so it would be less likely to get caught on the terrain.
Another area that can be improved is the app. Obviously, some parts of it are just placeholders now: the GPS and Graphs tabs do not contain anything, so it would be nice to have those features implemented. Unfortunately, at the time of writing, I have no idea how, so I’ll probably have to do some more experiments in Android Studio to figure that out.
Finally, the placement of the sensors and the camera is also something that could be improved. Even if the usual instinct is to put the camera on the front of the robot, it’s somewhat exposed there. It might be better to put it in the middle, perhaps using some sort of a pole, like you see on all the Mars rovers. And while we’re at it, adding some solar panels and sending the whole thing on some space mission might not be a bad idea! Let me know if you have a few hundred million dollars to spare and are willing to finance mind-blowing space venture!
In all seriousness though, thank you for reading the article and for following this entire series. Let me know what you think about the robot in the comments below! And if you decide that you want to build your own ArduRover, do share your results with the world!
