Inspired by Rovio, I decided to build a low-cost telepresence robot which processes audio and visual information on the upper computing unit. I contacted some of my friends and classmates from different majors and founded a group to start the building process.

First we designed the outward appearance and inner circuits and mechanical structure:

Then I use a CNC machine to build the chasis and installed three AC gearmotors, the output power and gear reduction ratio is carefully calculated:

We made the amplify and optocoupler input drive circuits:

The bottle on the left is a micro  fire extinguisher facility and I want to install it into the robot so it can use its own IP camera to recognize fire and extinguish the fire automatically.

I also added a lazer sensor, a fischertechnik robotic arm, a microphone and two speakers and finished its PIC controller and wireless data transmission module:

Finally I finished the programs and visual navigation algorithms:

Test drive:

Fully automatic visual flame detection:

Obstacle avoidance:

Demo video here: