Given all the efforts in this space, I wanted to spend some time playing around with the state of the art in this space. The first step was to build a robot platform that would let me do that so I decided to have some fun building out a platform from scratch and have fun doing that.
- The basic metal tank crawler here for $132. There are a lot of other crawlers there - buy one to your liking
- Ydlidar X4 lidar for $99 here
- Raspberry Pi 3 for $35 (The quad core is really nice)
- Dimension Engineering dual 12Ax2 regenerative motor driver here for $80. Provides a nice 5v output for the raspberry pi and the rest of the system to consume too.
- Raspberry pi v2 camera for $25
- MPU 9255 IMU that you can get here for $10-15
- A small OLED screen like this for $25... because why not :)
- I decided to go with LiPo batteries. These ones output 11.1v and have proven to be a good workhorse. Also got this alarm to make sure I dont over discarge my batteries. ($38 + $9)
- A basic voltage regulator to keep it steady at 12v is probably a good idea like this - almost certainly needed if you are getting a LiPo battery ($10)
Total BOM: ~$463