Poor Man's Khepera
ZaidPirwani wrote 06/10/2016 at 09:38 • 0 pointsso, I am doing this MS Thesis project in which I have to control movement of several robots in formation and have them collaborate with each other to share map/world info and such.
In all similar research papers I have found usage of academic research robotic platforms, one I particularly like is the KHEPERA - it is also used in the online course CONTROL OF MOBILE ROBOTS, by Dr. Magnus [something] - sorry am a bit bad with names.
http://www.k-team.com/mobile-robotics-products/khepera-iv/introduction
So, I cannot afford a KHEPERA, nor can the University, not at least for me, so my project starting this month is to make a POOR MAN's KHEPERA - using Arduinos, Raspberry Pi, a few simpler and cheaper but similar sensors and maybe a bit bigger design.
Is something like this needed ? I DO plan to keep it all opensource and need advice in that regard, if later I also want to sell pre-assembled or kits of the same.
Discussions
Become a Hackaday.io Member
Create an account to leave a comment. Already have an account? Log In.
I found out some years ago when building an autonomous grain cart for John Deere that the carts had to find a tail of the swarm and seek a valid terrain path to the tail. A different function is needed to maintain position at the tail. If the swarm is relatively large( ~>8), the first function requires cart avoidance by tracking all the other cart vectors and maintaining distance. Once the cart is attached to the end of a cart line to the harvester it only has to track the cart immediately ahead of it.
Are you sure? yes | no
So I don't believe that Khepera has the name recognition to warrant calling your project a "Poor Man's Khepera". It would be different if you were trying to clone something popular like an Arduino, but this case has no tangible benefits, and is the only thing causing risk of infringement to you.
From what I can see, it's a swarm-based RC car pretty much, so if you come up with your own name, there are no IP issues to worry about :)
Are you sure? yes | no
I started calling it that cause of the papers I am reading mention it as a staple in academic educational robots, further I am a fan of it sort of :)
but yeah, you are right.
Are you sure? yes | no
also, any copyright/IP related matters I need to worry about.
My plan is to make a similar round robot, somewhat bigger dimensions, keep it open source, but try to make it somewhat compatible (same function names and functionality and such) - and possibly sell it later as kits.
Are you sure? yes | no