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 Dagu²⁾

The hardware I have consists of a mainboard ³⁾, 2 servo motors ⁴⁾, and a tilt/swivel bracket ⁵⁾ with an infrared “compound eye” ⁶⁾. 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 mainboard⁷⁾ 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.

Despite the board having full H-bridge driver hardware, the example 'Explorer' code (file dated 24/01/2011) assumes that the main drive motors are of the analog pulse-width driven, continous rotation, servo type. That is they only require a single control line for forward, back and stop control. The example software for the “Mr Tidy” robot handles normal PWM DC motors, and has the same corner infrared collision detection hardware, but it also has a lot of other featues and so requires a controller with a lot more I/O pins than an Arduino UNO.

• Dagu support site
• Miniature servo Magnetic clutches
• Miniature servo Magnetic clutches

• Explorer instruction manual
• Explorer example Arduino code
• Preview on LMR
• Understanding the "Explorer" PCB
• RS011-2/0, RS011-2/2, RS011-4/4 versions of Rover 5 chassis

• (https://sites.google.com/site/daguproducts/home/tutorials/understanding-mr-general)
• RS002
• Understanding the Mr. General Robot Kit
  • Bot 08M
  • "Start Here" robot
  • greatly improved manual
  • Make your own IR obstacle detection sensor
  • pan/tilt kit was designed right here on LMR
  • Gareth's Picaxxo
  • "How to's" for the speakjet
  • Arduino and TTS256 companion processor
  • Understanding the Mr. General - attachments
• http://www.arobose.com/docs/Mr.General_Instruction_manual.pdf Mr. General instruction manual

• Using the 'compound eye' with an Arduino processor (including code)
• Cheap home made IR compound eye
• IR compound eye
• Understanding the IR Compound Eye from DAGU
• Calibtating compound eye
• IR Compound Eye

• Oddbots pages

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