Store vac turns into a Roomba on steroids

A robotic vacuum, similar to a Roomba, affords a variety of comfort. As a substitute of getting to hoover and sweep your individual flooring, you’ve got a bit of maid robotic to do the job for you. However these units have little or no energy and capability, which makes them ineffective for something apart from gentle cleansing. Clay Builds wished one thing extra substantial, so he created his personal Roomba on steroids primarily based on a store vac.

The idea right here is sort of precisely the identical as any generic robotic vacuum available on the market, simply at an even bigger scale. The beefy store vac will fortunately suck up gallons of particles with out grievance, whereas the outsized tires can traverse even the roughest storage flooring. 

The drive system is much like most rover-style robots, with two motorized wheels. An Arduino UNO Rev3 board controls the drive motors (automotive windshield wiper motors) via two DFRobot drivers. The body is a mixture of 3D-printed elements and laser-cut wooden. DIY workarounds, like a bump sensor made utilizing a restrict change and a wire hanger, helped to maintain prices down. An enormous inverter takes DC energy from the massive pastime lithium battery and turns it into family AC energy for the store vac’s motor. 

The person can pilot the robotic manually utilizing a PlayStation controller, however there’s additionally an autonomous mode such as you see on client robotic vacuum cleaners. It doesn’t have any true room-mapping functionality, however somewhat simply strikes till it bumps into one thing after which turns by a random quantity.

In one thing like a carpentry workshop, this may be very helpful.