Trash-Bot

Does the bot need to be free standing? Can you put it on a track? If you are using the guide wire method you would wind up digging some kind of channel to bury it anyway. Another thought is to think of a similar methodology as a cable car, rather than mounting the locomotion onto the bot, mount it at the bots 'station'.

just a thought... material movement machinery has been around a long time, perhaps looking through a company that sells this type of equipment may spark some ideas...

Old age ?:-)

My father is 87 and I see signs that his body is simply wearing out :-(

...Jim Thompson

Dean Burell -

Nehmo - A track would be fine; no steering would be necessary. But tracks are expensive and require installation. This bot should work in the common situation of a driveway leading the curb. The current state of technology is advanced enough so that the navigation can be provided by small a video camera, a computer, a steering servo, and some software.

For this first one, I'm pretty much settled on the chassis being built from the Harbor Freight cart

I was thinking that this could be done surprisingly simple. Sounds like a line follower robot. Simply provide a line to the curb. Put an ultrasonic/IR sensor package to detect something/someone around so it won't bump into and another to not fall off the curb. Could be put on a timer so that it would follow the line to the curb at a certain time and when the trash is taken off (the weight is lightened) it would follow the line back. I don't think this would be all that technically challenging. Perhaps there are other issues that I am not thinking about but this would probably get you 80% there. But this is what I came up with off the top of my head.

Randy Hootman