General Electronics Design Reference Book?

[flash3780]

Hey folks. I was wondering if you guys might have some suggestions for a electronics design reference book. I'm thinking of something along the lines of Shigley's "Mechanical Engineering Design," but for electronics.

A couple of my friends and I are looking at designing a better robotic lawnmower (thinking that there's money to be made in that area). Being mechanical, I have some basic circuit design training and a bit of programming and controls background, but no experience general electronic component design... a bit of theory, but not much practical application. I'm confident that we can put our heads together and figure out what we need, but a good reference or two or three would be indispensable.

That said, I was wondering if there might be any suggestions... other than "hire an electrical engineer" . Thanks a ton!

 

[IRstuff]

There is, of course, "Standard Handbook for Electrical Engineers," but I think you'll find that >75% of it will be irrelevant to robotics. Horowitz' "Art of Electronics," is the usual standby, but, again, most of it will be irrelevant specifically for robotics.

Even with the, "hire an electrical engineer," you'd need to be quite specific, as someone who is expert at traction motors and fans will most likely be not an expert at robotic controls and algorithms. Just the navigation and route planning system alone would be someone quite specialized. Obstacle avoidance might be a third person, etc.

TTFN

FAQ731-376
Chinese prisoner wins Nobel Peace Prize

 

[Skogsgurra]

Agree completely. No book, no single person can help you designing something that will be revolutionary and competitive. Those times are over when you could build a new locomotive and win the World.

If you have a really revolutionary idea - like a lawnmowing sphere with no wheels or something like that - you still had better sell the idea to a manufacturing and marketing company. Small scale production has no future. At least not when it comes to "luxury" items like automatic lawnmowers.

Gunnar Englund

http://www.gke.org

--------------------------------------
Half full - Half empty? I don't mind. It's what in it that counts.

 

[IRstuff]

Did I count right? There's something like 8 companies selling robotic lawnmowers already?

TTFN

FAQ731-376
Chinese prisoner wins Nobel Peace Prize

 

[MacGyverS2000]

Unless we're talking from a mechanical perspective, a "better" robotic lawnmower means better guidance algorithms (programmer with controls experience, possibly learning algorithms), longer battery life (materials science, maybe bio/physics), etc. If you plan on hacking together some cheap sensors and treating the project like a high-school/undergrad design project, you'll only succeed in spending money on a lot of prototypes.

And unless you're willing to throw a lot of money (as in millions of $s) at it to eventually manufacture the entire thing, the real money would be in resale of the algorithms, the improved batteries, etc.

Dan - Owner

http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com

 

[flash3780]

Well, as with any design... the first thing to do would be to build a prototype. From there, we'd have to go out and find some capital to make a production-ready design. And yes, the guidance systems are what's lacking in the current state-of-the-art. It's all about building a better mousetrap, after all.

Trouble is... while a lawnmower is a mechanical device, the guidance systems are a sensing and programming challenge. A large company would employ a team of engineers from different disciplines to work on the different aspects of the design. But heck, I figure that if we put our heads together, we can figure it out well enough to build a prototype. A group of technical people can change the world, ya know?

That said, I find good references indispensable and wading through mediocre references isn't really what I want to spend my time doing. The "Standard Handbook for Electrical Engineers" and Horowitz' "Art of Electronics" look like great references... pretty much what I was hoping for. If anyone has any suggestions for good robotics texts, that would be extremely helpful as well.

I really think that robotics are the bleeding edge of technology right now. Machines can do things that couldn't be done even 20 years ago because of advanced control logic and faster, smaller, cheaper microprocessors. If there's anyplace where engineering advancements can be made that change the way people live, it's there. There's a real market opportunity for this sort of thing; if can do it better and cheaper than the competition, we win. If we can't... well, heck at least we were in the game.

 

[Skogsgurra]

"If we can't... well, heck at least we were in the game" That's the right attitude! I've always been in it for the fun. Still poor. But have had an interesting life. Good luck!

Gunnar Englund

http://www.gke.org

--------------------------------------
Half full - Half empty? I don't mind. It's what in it that counts.

 

[IRstuff]

Even robots are highly diverse. You migh want to start with:

http://robots.net/rcfaq.html

which lists robotics events in the US, and then look for specific robot types and see if there are resources that you can acquire.

If you're still looking at developing lawnmowers, then you might want to see if you can rent a few and see what their shortcomings and advantages are. Scoping the competition is de rigueur for any such endeavor.

TTFN

FAQ731-376
Chinese prisoner wins Nobel Peace Prize

 

[VEBill]

Perhaps the best books would be Robotics, specifically the Electronics sections of those books.

Here's one on-line:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Robotics

You can follow the endless links and spends weeks learning.

As already mentioned, the "electronics" aspect is a relatively minor (but critical) aspect to such a project. You need to know enough - for example - to provide clean power to the controller in a probably electrically noisy environment, or to provide reliable high power switching circuits. The rest is "just" computer-weenie interfacing.

I'll bet that most Robotics competitors (even the winners) know just enough electronics theory to get by.

 

[VEBill]

PS: Old heavy-duty printers (daisy wheel, and similar 1980s technology) are often a good source of large stepper motors, pulleys, etc. Often free if you can find them.

 

[flash3780]

Thanks for the links, and for the tip about where to find stepper motors. Still researching things on this end... and trying to convince my comp-sci buddy that this is a good idea.