Nita's M.A.E.P. Rover

Today I took a break from working after work, and working on my Hero Robot to work on a small project for my girlfriend and her robotics class.

Introducing MAEP Rover 1.0.0.

MAEP stands for Mobile Arduino Experimental Platform and is a term I found on the web being used by several small robotic rover types.  So I decided to make one for her to use in her robotics class as another example of an experimental robot type that could be programmed fairly simply (in C) and use pretty common, off the shelf (nowadays) parts for experimentation.

I am only putting the basic control code in the 'brain' at the moment as the whole point is for people to experiment and change the rover to suit their needs, or its environment.
So, all it will do at the moment, is move until it 'sees' and obstruction, then stop, look right and left and either choose one of these two ways or turn around and try something else.

All the rest of the code will be up to her and her class to work out.

It is controlled by an Arduino Uno, a small H-bridge to control 2 small dc motors for the wheels, and a servo to swivel the Parallax Ping sensor mounted on the servo.  The power is from two 3.7V rechargeable batteries providing 7.4 volts to power the whole thing.  The batteries recharge pretty fast and they are readily available and provide enough power for a reasonable amount of test time between charges.

I put and off/on switch for when you are running on batteries so that it does not just 'take-off' when the power hits it, and the sensor should keep it from bashing itself into a wall...that's the theory anyway.

I will post all the basic code here and hopefully as people change it, they can update this a little further.

Keep in mind the code will be really basic as I am not sure of the class' ability to read or program in C, so instead of making libraries for the motor drivers, etc. I have just made all the features into functions that can be modified all from one program.  It is not necessarily as efficient, but as their skills progress, they can make libraries and drivers on their own and learn a little along the way.
At least I hope so...

So, I will upload the code tomorrow (after I finish writing it tonight?) and then see where we go from here!