About

This is BeeBoop the Rover. He is an Arduino and RaspberryPi powered household rover capable of autonomous navigation and obstacle avoidance.

I created BeeBoop as a learning platform for myself to learn about making autonomous robots. The design was inspired by other simple robotics platform I have seen over the years. One of the main goals with my design was mechanical simplicity and the fewest moving parts as possible. BeeBoop only has two driver wheels which are fixed in their orientation along with a single ball castor wheel. This means BeeBoop can only steer with differential drive of it's two driver wheels, this does however mean it can turn on the spot in tight areas.

BeeBoop is driven by two very basic brushed DC motors that are attached to simple plastic gear boxes. These motors are not very powerful, nor the gear boxes robust. However, they don't need to be, the simplicity is the advantage here as they also come with wheels that are a simple press fit. These motors are also driven by a simple two channel H-bridge. All of these components came in a kit designed specifically for making a robot such as this (link below).

In this first version of BeeBoop, there has also been made a provision in the top part of the chassis for a HC-SR04 ultrasonic sensor. My mounting solution is simply to use the slot provided to hold the sensor in place with hot glue. This is currently BeeBoop's only means of navigating the world. Future iterations of BeeBoop will have more sensors.

Parts List