RC Off Road as Sensor Platform

[Frank Gentges]

Tacoistas,

We were discussing the idea of using these little Radio Controlled off 
road dune buggies with our disaster van to insert and recover sensors 
from a potentially dangerous area in a disaster.  Slashdot has a nice 
article on use of these as a platform for dealing with the IEDs in 
Iraq.  This looks like a similar application.

See http://tackledesign.com/?topic=proj_ord

and the link to the off-the-shelf RC off-road vehicle is at

http://www.traxxas.com/products/electric/emaxx/trx_emaxx.htm

The Traxxas web site has a user manual available for download.

You can find these for sale on eBay with a search on "traxxas e-maxx".

Do we have anyone who has alrady worked with these or is interested in 
working with these and a sensor payload?  Is this the best one to use?

Sensor payload could be like:

TV camera
GPS
microphone
magnetometer
seismic detector
radiation detector (geiger counter)
smell sensor like in Nuts &Volts last month

and of course a loudspeaker so the little bugger can talk back.

A Pan, tilt and zoom on the TV camera would be nice but probaly too 
hard.  Also night capable with IR illuminators.

AMRAD members have the skills to extend the RC range, QSY into a ham 
band with higher transmitter power etc and bigger battery pack for 
extended range and mission lifetime.  These things are way overpowered 
for racing now.  Once on station it should have a low visibility profile 
and stay for extended periods while relaying back sensor data.

Frank