Watch this video:

TUI Spring 2011 – Crawler from Niranjan Krishnamurthi on Vimeo.

Lecture Slides

Available here

In Lab Exercise

Objective

Using the servo motor to explore rotational and linear motions.

Activities

Part 1 – The Servo Motor

1. Connect jumper wires to the servo motor. Also add a colorful wire marker to the servo head so you can easily identify the turn.

2. Connect the servo motor to your Arduino.

The program servo_control_serial.txt lets you drive the servo by pressing number keys (1 through 9, and 5 as the middle). Observe the position of the servo as well as the values (pulse width in ms) printed on the serial monitor.

3. Next, connect your potentiometer and control the servo motor with the potentiometer:

The program servo_control_pot.txt lets you drive the servo with a pot. Again, observe the position of the servo as well as the values printed on the serial monitor.

Part 2 –Make a Crawler

You can turn rotation movement into linear movement with clever mechanical levers. Experiment with different levers that can make your crawler move forward.

Here is one example of a crawler:

Homework

Post descriptions and photo(s)/video of your crawler on the course website. Once you get your crawler to move forward, perhaps you would want to generate movement from your program and use your potentiometer to control the speed of the movement.

You may also team up with a friend and use two servos instead of one.