Page 228 - Robots Androids and Animatrons : 12 Incredible Projects You Can Build

position, or the video camera can be mounted on top of a servo
motor for camera movement and tracking. The servo motor
mounting is naturally more complex and requires the building of a
separate R/C control for panning the camera left and right. In a high-
fidelity system, the camera panning would be linked to a head-
tracking unit. So if the operator turned his or her head left or right,
the camera on the mobile robot would also pan left or right in sync
with the operator’s head. To make this work properly, the operator
should be wearing a VR-style head-mounted display (HMD). This is
a lot of work. I advise using a fixed camera position first, to keep the
construction simple.

Fixed mounting
You need a small section of Velcro secured to the bottom of the cam-
era’s battery pack. The mating piece of Velcro is secured to the chas-
sis of the R/C car. The finished Golem robot is illustrated in Fig. 9.8.
Driving via telepresence

You can drive the car remotely using the radio controls while looking
at the TV monitor. The camera is equipped with a microphone, so
you can hear audio from around the R/C car when you are driving.
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9.7 Color camera with battery pack ready for mounting on R/C car
Team LRN Telepresence robot