Web Controlled Tank

About a year ago I attached a video camera to the top of my remote control PT Cruiser and drove it around town just for fun. This got me thinking of different ways to remote control a camera equipped vehicle, and naturally my thoughts gravitated towards the web. I had heard about a number of web controlled devices but never followed up on how exactly they were done. Nevertheless, armed with the desire to create a web controlled camera equipped device, and a bit of knowledge on how the web works, I drew up a plan on how I could create a web controlled tank that could navigate an obstacle course and snap photos of various objects as a game.

The basic architecture of the web is server/client. A server houses information and clients access the server to retrieve and post information. That's the really simplified schematic of most web systems. You have P2P, of course, where each server is a client and vice versa, but that's still a server-client system. Knowing this, and knowing a bit of server programming, I realized that it'd actually be very easy (at least in concept) to create a web controlled device if the server is embedded in the vehicle.

The idea is to take a remote controlled tank and mash it up with an old laptop I have that's still good, despite not being powerful enough to do much more than light Internet surfing. The body of the tank will be modified to make room for the modified laptop. Attached to the turret of the tank will be a stripped down web cam wired to the laptop. The motors of the RC tank will be replaced with stepper motors wired to the laptop as well. This allows for a software control of the tank device and greater precision in movement. Both the motors and the web cam can be controlled through server software running on laptop.

So, everything's controlled through the server, and that's how we get remote. The laptop server can be accessed through the Internet the same as any other server, for example those that serve up web pages or games. The server on the laptop is connected to a main local area network through the laptop's built in Wi-Fi card, and the WLAN is connected to the Internet through an ISP. The web cam provides for remote viewing of where the tank is heading, so the user at the controls can steer the tank. The controls for operating everything are built into a web page. In short, through software a remote user can control the internal laptop devices (motors, cams, etc), and it is possible for someone in India to control the tank and run it through an obstacle course I set up in my United States yard, snapping photos of targets I set up. It can be someone as far off as India, or it can be me sitting on my back porch surfing the web wirelessly. It's nonlocal. The range of where this tank can go is only limited by battery power and the extent of the Wi-Fi signal, which can extend pretty darn far. This whole thing can be moved to one of those cities that are entirely covered by wireless signals and that's a pretty big area to play.

Doesn't that just sound like fun? There's so many different ways to have fun with this. Two tanks could even be set up and pitted against each other. If I could adequately protect the interior electronics, I could probably even rig up paintball guns to the tanks. Web controlled stepping motors open a lot of doors. Like I said, a number of interactive games could be built upon this idea.

Similar devices have been built by other people, of course, and were built long before I came up with this idea, but as a thought project I purposely didn't want to look at them until after I had mapped out my own project to see if I could devise something on my own. After I completed my plans, I realized it's very similar to how that Texas group did their highly controversial online hunting (mine's just a game where nothing gets hurt) and that Bradley University students in Illinois created almost exactly the same thing as a senior project. When completed, my tank will hopefully look like the Magnus Ivarssons tank (pictured left), which is exactly what I had in mind before realizing he'd already made one. To my knowledge his tank is the first web controlled tank ever built. Clever Swedish people! I'm never upset on finding that someone else came up with an idea first, as long as I independently came up with the idea on my own. It shows that I'm not always a quick thinker, but I can still figure things out : )

At some point I am going to tackle this project completely. I haven't yet because I'm still collecting parts. Sufficiently large RC tanks can get pretty costly, so I might just model my own. Everything's complete on paper and the parts aren't all that expensive compared to the fun that awaits. The only thing putting this project on hold is the build time.