We recently received a message from John Piccirillo, Ph.D. of Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Alabama, Huntsville. Dr. Piccirillo, a Parallax customer of 25 years, bought an original Parallax Quadrover in 2008 and has been using it since then for a summer NASA robotics intern team, and several senior design teams. The Quadrover has had lots of modifications, including the removal of the gas engine in 2015 and replacement with two 350W PMDC motors, wheel sprockets and a chain drive made by the UAH research machine shop.
Today, the Quadrover uses an Arduino Mega for navigational functions, a separate Nano for R/C control. A Bosch IMU (BNO055) and a pair of optical wheel encoders were added to make more effective skid steer turns, as shown in this video. This year, the team added a metal detector for a project that sweeps a 20mx20m outdoor area for “mines” (metal cans) and records their position in 2m x 2m grid squares. An air horn announces a detection with a flashing light. Power comes from a pair of 12V, 18 AH sealed lead-acid batteries. The robot weighs about 100 lbs.
Above, you’ll see a video of the modified Quadrover doing the mine detection. Pictures of Dr. Piccirillo’s system are shown below, along with the original Quadrover. Parallax made 50 Quadrover robots and sold them to educational institutions around the country, where many of them are still in use today. If you ever visit Parallax, you’ll see that we have one in our front office, enclosed in an acrylic case where it will safely reside for the next 50 years.
