Guard Dog Robot Project

The poll I opened a couple of weeks ago concluded that the correct way to continue was to remake guarddog , is keeping its current size. So I came in contact with an industrial designer to make schematics and the actual parts for GuarddoG mk5.. It will also probably be the last stage of the GuardoG robot!
I have been busy polishing parts of the code and ordering new servos and some electronics that were missing..

The designer of the new body is Antonis Xenopoulos

I added a USB mobile connect card called ZTE MF636 ( GSM 900 MHz GSM 850 MHz GSM 1900 MHz GSM 1800 MHz ) to the design of guarddog ..

The card cost me 25 euros when an arduino GSM shield like the SM5100B costs more than 90 euros ( approx 105 including shipping costs ) ..
The USB GSM modem has much greater performance enabling 7.2Mbps internet access where WiFi is not present and there is network coverage , and also solves many power related problems utilizing the USB power supply..

To avoid reinventing the wheel for sms capabilities ( and while the GSM AT command is fairly straightforward ) I use gsm-utils that has a very nice daemon ( gsmsmsd ) for sending and receiving SMS. It makes a spooling directory for SMS and redirects Incoming SMS messages to a program of your choice , I start it with this parameter set

The sms input & output has been nicely integrated in the message passing RoboKernel and is beeing dealt with cleanly and uniformly along with the web interface , gui and console command line

https://github.com/AmmarkoV/RoboVision/commit/b38098f9f3f1eebdb91d016e2eea494b1ad49ba7

https://github.com/AmmarkoV/RoboVision/commit/da51cfdc3f97f22047293703206b0ac08a3a99a4

I also deactivated the PIN number on the SIM card in order to make it work out of the box..

I am very happy with it

http://www.sasosedlacek.com/anglesko/projects_beggar.htm

Maybe it is a good way for me to gather some money for new servos and a GSM module

One of the hazards of working in robotics is that it encourages ADD–there are just so many areas to explore: navigation, sensor integration, visual perception, face and speech recognition, problem solving, learning and memory, language comprehension, social communication, and so on. One could literally spend a lifetime bouncing around from one topic to another. This is beginning to happen with the Pi Robot project, especially now that ROS makes it even easier to get distracted by the “latest cool thing.” So I thought I’d draw up a roadmap of sorts to give us something a little more structured to follow.

http://www.pirobot.org/blog/0020/

It will be implemented inside VisualCortex/CameraPose.c

A little offtopic .. ;P