Circuits

[steamboat]

Hello Group,

I am playing with the pololu motor driver and want to build a closed loop system for the leg motors. Therefore I want to integrate a rotation sensor for each motor. This will need 7 pins for the pololu and at least 2 pins with interrupt for the motion sensors. Not much pins left for other fun things to play with. Additional I am running out of memory!

What do you think about using an autonomous motor closed loop unit/PCB with an individual 32u4 which supports the motor driver, the motion sensors and maybe a collision sensing system build from some bumper switches or US-sensors.

This "spinal cord" motor unit could communicate through a two wire serial communication with the brain. The commands could be like go ahead till you hit and obstacle - go ahead two steps - turn 90° to the left (for this we also could integrate a compass into this system) - walk ahead with synchronized legs - walk ahead with 180° offset for left and right legs and so on.

As usual for spinal cord systems this would relieve the master brain a lot from the control work, free some memory and save connetors in the same way.