Overview

I recently came across parts of a robot system that turned out to be parts of a “Rover 5 Explorer kit”¹⁾ type robot platform. Rover 5 is a tracked chassis on which can be mounted a variety of robot controllers. Explorer is an interface board to facilitate connection of an Arduino or similar controller to the robot platform. An IR compound eye mounted on a pan/tilt assembly can be used to track moving objects or as a simple range finder.

The mainboard circuitry is similar to that found on the Dagu “Mr. General” and “Mr. Tidy” robots, and the software for the IR compound eye will work the same.

The robot was made by Arexx²⁾/Dagu³⁾

Hardware description

The hardware I have consists of a mainboard, 2 servo motors ⁴⁾, and a tilt/swivel bracket with an infrared 'compound eye ⁵⁾'. The mainboard has a prototyping area, corner mounted infrared transmitter/receiver sensors, power regulators, h-bridge motor driver, motor current level sensor, motor rotary encoder interface, status LEDs, many servo/sensor plug/sockets, NiMH battery charging circuit, and mounting holes to suit Arduino boards, breadboards and servos.

The tilt/swivel bracket, servos and compound eye form the 'head' of the robot, and with suitable software allow the robot to track objects close to it (< 200mm).

My version of the mainboard can be seen in some photos of the Rover 5, eg https://sites.google.com/site/daguproducts/home/download-page/IMG_2297 (small).jpg, but most photos show a presumably later version with a row of 6 screw terminals at the rear left side of the board.