Just a quick brain dump: more and less useful things you can do with the components of an old electric wheelchair (usually two 24 V DC geared electric motors of 200-400 W each, a motor controller, and batteries).
- Telepresence robot for tele-farming. The robot would have a video camera and a high resolution still image camera. It would carry PV panels to recharge itself, so would never get completely stuck (but may only be able to move a few hundred meters per day). The robot can be used to inspect the farms and growing conditions for remotely giving advice to smallholder farmers in developing regions. Also, it could allow consumers from so-called developed countries to explore the farms and village where their products come from, without having to travel there. As part of a P2P food monitoring scheme like the Fairdirect Label (which I co-developed), the telepresence robot would allow customers to check whether the farming conditions are as stated.
- Telepresence robot for “visiting” friends and relatives.
- Remote gardening robot. So you can grow your food in one place even when living a nomadic life. The robot for this would look like a portal robot, driving above a row of plants.
- Weeding robot. Would use deep learning based image classifiers to identify weeds.
- Irrigation robot for gardening.
- Robotic parcel delivery in a village. Would be a simple line following robot, with a network of lines on sidewalks in the village.
- Toolsharing robot for multiple villages. At 7-10 km/h it’s realistic to let the robot move tools on demand in an area of 5 km diameter (6-8 villages). Delivery time would be at most one hour (going to the village 5 km apart, and coming back). It could be a simple line-following robot, with lines on the ground between villages.
- Pulling a trailer with load.
- Solar powered autonomous vehicle. This is more like an art project: an autonomous robot that is left to travel alone forever.
- Firewood collecting robot.
- Street sweeper robot. Of course autonomous.
- Street graffitti robot. CNC painting on the street and other large surfaces. ith spray paint cans, chalk or other means.
- Telepresence robot for the public. Would be put in some interesting location, like an abandoned industrial area, a refugee camp, or a war zone. It would be controlled by anyone on the Internet who is interested in driving it for a time.
- Animal herding robot.
- Open source StreetView mapping robot. In contrast to normal StreetView, it would collect 360° pictures in a grid every 5-10 cm. This allows to fluidly visualize moving from anywhere to anywhere (while keeping eye distance from the floor, of course).
- Soil mapping robot for agriculture.
- Autonomous mini library. It would drive around in a city by itself and offer books to anyone who wants them.
- Sutonomous mini sales cart.
- Snow pattern maker. Some people create huge, nice geometric patterns in snow by walking them. This would be more efficient.
- Autonomous terrace farming robot. It would probably be tracked for that purpose.
- Fertilizer robot. In organic gardening that would mean urine and compost.
- Load carrying robot that follows a person. Using an optical beacon attached to the person.
- Drink and food server for a restaurant.
- Self-driving battery power tool carrier and charger.
- Storage management robot. Carrying pallets or boxes to storage workers, like Amazon does it in their storage areas.
- Robotic load carrier for mountain villages. It would move slowly but autonomously between villages. For villages in Nepal which are still often only connected by footpaths, this could be an interesting and economical new logistics infrastructure.
- Vacuum cleaner robot for indoors.
- Trash collecting robot for cleaning up outdoors.
- Camera rig robot.
- Childrens’ toy car. They will love it.
- Remote surveillance robot for guarding a place. WIth cameras and LED lamps attached.
- Advertising carrier robot. To be used in pedestrian areas etc..
- Segway type vehicle. Quite suitable as there are two independently powered wheels normally.
To approach any of these ideas, or your own of course, have a look at some of the more interesting devices people already created out of electric wheelchair parts:
- bzeug: Track Drive Robot. This is actually my personal favourite. It’s cute!
- Barbiturickr: Snow plow robot RC tracked vehicle ripsaw tank. Similar, and also cute. Here you can see the inside better – how the electric wheelchair motors are mounted.
- OpenElectronicsOrg: The open source Snow Plow Robot (with snow).
- Robert Cowan: Robotic Snow Plow. Also really nice. And well explained.
- sniperjdp: 007 Video Camera Platform Robot Project
- ideaLABORATORIES: ROBOPLOW. Quite a large robotic snowplough for sidewalks etc.. Not necessarily from parts of electric wheelchairs, but it would be possible on that basis.
Finally, here are some good technical explanations about how to add remote control to an electric wheelchair:
- Robert Cowan: Robotic Snow Plow – Part 1 and Part 2. Already linked above. Very good explanations.
- How to build a robot from used wheelchair – Snehesh Shrestha, Ashwin Vijayakumar
- Jim Conner: Hacking an Invacare Pronto Electric Wheelchair – Part 1. This is a 7-part series, with the other parts linked from the first.
- Grorange Garage: Electric Wheelchair RC Hack
- Hacking electric wheelchair drive. Article about reverse engineering the serial communication protocol used by many joysticks to communicate with the wheelchair’s motor controller. It can then be emulated for example with an Arduino microcontroller. More discussion about that topic here.
- nullkill: Mowstation controller hack for wheelchair robot. Another way of attaching to the wheelchair controller electronics.
- Build a Robot From A Power Wheelchair, and from the same author Wheelchair Operates by joystick, or by R/C, or Autonomous Operation.
- onbevreesd: R/C wheelchair. Demonstrates that you can also remote control a wheelchair by attaching servos to its control joystick. Same here. Quite a hack, but works around the need to fiddle with the control electronics.
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