SonarBot is on going project as of January 2006. It is a simple mobile platform I designed to use the Vex microcontroller.  I was working on a much larger all-terrain platform but realized my building abilities are way ahead of my programing abilities.  The AT bot was designed to have a panning sonar for navigation and 4 Sharp IR sensors for close object  detection along with four wheel drive with four wheel steering. No way I could do all that at my present level of programing ability so I decided to construct a simple chassis  to simplify the learning curve.  The Sonar Bot has all the sensors as the AT Bot will have but with differential steering instead of the four wheel steering.  Click on the any image to see more pictures.

So far so good,  I have managed to write a program that allows it to wander around avoiding objects.  I have tested it in very "object rich enviroments" and it does suprisingly well. It gets into some very tight spots and is able to escape almost always.  I added a wireless 2.4 ghz color camera so I could keep an eye on it from my computer.  I still have to add the sharp IR sensors,  been hacking at the code as it is a non-standard vex sensor.  One of my favorite part of the bot is the simple wire bumper.  The wire is connected to ground and the left and right posts are connected to two inputs.  This allows for left, right and straight on bump detection.  The Power comes from two surplus 7.2 volt lithium ion batteries.  The chassis is laser cut out of black acrylic sheet.  The vex controller also allows me to control it from an RC transmitter and infrared leds have been added so it can see in the dark.  I am addicted to the laser cutter now, it is so quick and clean and makes modifications easy, check out the detail shots in the slide show (click on image).