suggestion on components

[emabrey]

My goal is to create a bot with the capability of :
- 2 motors for drive wheel, and 1 motor for a mobile head (for sonar)
- detect IR object with a good vieiwing angle
- detect distance on a mobile contraption like a 180 degrees moving
head.
- detect orientation instaneously with a compass
- detect incline with accelerometer
- the whole bot must be within 22 cm (all sides like fitting in a 22cm-
dia cylindar).
- a controller allows some sort of multi-tasking, as we do a lot of
triangulation and constantly monitoring orientation and existance of
IR object.

With these said, I have very hard time to find anything except the
Mindstorms nxt processor. as strange as it sounds... ! However the
processor brick and motors are TOO huge. I had to get a multiplexer to
get all the I2C sensors that I need. Yike!!!

So, it seems that I need:
- IR sensor with good viewing angle
- Sonar sensor or some some sensors to detect distance
- Compass
- Accelerometer
- "small" ... the whole bot must be within 22 cm (all sides like
fitting in a 22cm-dia cylindar).
- a controller fast doing floating points calculation; ideally
capabable of multi-tasking
- C programming interface allow concurrency
- ideally motors with encoder feedback. If not, we'll have to count on
the compass... prefer to have the encoder feedback though.

In the future, I'd like to enable some sort of wireless communication,
such as bluetooth, or wi-fi.

With these said, I have very hard time to find anything except the
Mindstorms.. as strange as it sounds... ! However the processor brick
and motors are SO huge too. I had to get a multiplexer to get all the
I2C sensors that I need. Yike!!!

We are very good at robotic programming in C, often got hung on the
hardware!!! By the way, after viewing the Tcp/ip and c interface from
open-robot , I start to like the software already!

I am out of clue!!!

[abotics]

I am not sure if you asking for a robot platform suggestion or
component suggestions?

The Open-Robot design will fit within the 22 cm diameter. However, the
GP2D120 IR sensors are statically mounted and the robot does not
contain a compass, sonar sensor or accelerometer, but these could be
added. Open-Robot's PIC18F4520 microcontroller firmware has been
designed using the CCS C Compiler and it can be modified to
accommodate additional sensors and/or logic.

If you are interested in learning more feel free to submit additional
questions or download the Owner's Manual.

http://www.abotics.com/docs/OpenRobotManual.pdf

Abe