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The MegaScout

The University of Minnesota has done a great deal of work on the scout robots for use in military and surveillance applications.  In the summer of 2002, a group of researchers were tasked with building a larger version of the Scout robot named the MegaScout.  The UMN group selected the BrainStem controllers as the basic I/O controllers for the robot.  Each MegaScout has one micro BrainStem board in each of two sensor bays.  The main motor control is handled by a custom Moto 1.0 BrainStem module modified to handle larger currents. 

The MegaScout with larger articulated drive system.

Custom Micro GP Printed Circuit Boards

This robot packs an amazing array of batteries, motors, sensors, and computational hardware into a small space.  This required custom boards to fit in the tight spaces of the MegaScout.  Acroname built custom designed boards for both the GP modules in the two sensor bays and the Moto module for the drive control.  The micro GP modules are small enough to allow them to become part of a wiring harness and sensor combination.  These can then be swapped out by plugging in other harnesses.  Best of all, some processing can happen within the harness via the reflexes and TEA virtual machines in the BrainStem module. 

The micro GP module (left) and a standard Moto module for comparison.

Custom Moto Module

The motors in this robot are huge Maxon motors that could likely start a car if needed.  This required a larger drive circuit than our current 3A-EMF driver.  We doubled up the H-Bridges on this custom module and included the Back-EMF circuit to allow speed feedback when not using the motor's high-resolution encoders.  In the end, this bridge couldn't handle the huge currents of these motors at high speeds and so another bridge was designed and coupled to a micro Moto module to handle the motion control and I2C communications. 

The original custom Moto board.

Additional Information

The official MegaScout website includes much more information and photos.  Be sure to check out the video which shows this robot in action.