Toby — Tracked Robot
Maps a room with LiDAR and streams it back live
INTERACTIVE
Spin the assembly
The rebuilt chassis, exactly as modeled — tracks, drive, and sensor deck. Drag to rotate.
LOADING 3D…IN MOTION
Driving under its own power
The platform moving on its printed tracks, driven from the web interface the robot serves itself. The chassis, sprockets, and tracks all came off the printer; the drive motors run on the 12 V side of the onboard DC-DC conversion.
- Driven from a browser on the same network — no tether and no separate controller.
- The sensor deck carrying the RPLIDAR rides above the electronics bay.
A tracked robot built as a platform rather than a demo — something to hang sensors off and write control code against. A Raspberry Pi does the thinking, an RPLIDAR unit on the top deck maps what's around it, and a camera streams back to a web interface served on the local network.
Power was the part that needed the most care: the drive motors, the Pi, and the sensors all want different rails, so the chassis carries DC-DC conversion down to 12 V and 5.5 V rather than running everything off one supply and hoping.
The control software is Python, and the interface is a page served from the robot itself — drive it, watch the video, and see what the LiDAR sees, all from a browser on the same network. One motor controller failed during testing and was diagnosed and replaced.
HOW IT WENT
- 01
Chassis
Printed tracked platform with a sensor deck
- 02
Power
DC-DC conversion to separate 12 V and 5.5 V rails
- 03
Sense
RPLIDAR and camera onto the Pi
- 04
Drive
Python control behind a local web interface
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