Power and electronics schematic

I made a first sketch for the power and electronics diagram for DEVOL.

DEVOL power and electronics schematic

In essence the robot will rely on a 12V lead battery as the main source of power. A small gasoline powered generator will serve as a means to keeping this battery charged when in the field.

Power will be distributed from the battery via two separate regulators, a delicate and stable regulator for controllers and logic and a more robust and protecting  regulator for the power-hungry actuator motors.

The system is kept modular so that the different components such as visual input, strategic planning and real-time control may be handled by a separate computer (I suspect that especially the vision part will require a rather powerful computer).

The actuators are connected to a serial bus that distributes commands for each actuator from the real-time controller. Power is distributed along a separate power rail.

Visual input is provided by a calibrated stereo pair (two Logitech 9000 Pro) and another "long range" camera (Logitech 9000 Pro with mounted tele-lens). The whole camera rig is supposed to be put on a pan-tilt rig, guarded from the elements by a glass/plastic dome.

For audio, a hand-held zoom H1 stereo recorder, which provides high quality, low latency sound card and high quality microphones requiring very little power. It also has a third input where I intend to plug in a "long range" so called "shotgun microphone".

This is the first draft, expect drastic changes!