Veterobot

Description

Powered by BeagleBoard and equipped with bunch of sensors such as two cameras on rotated head, ultra-sound range finders, compass and GPS receiver, Veterobot is the great platform for autonomous drive. On-board WiFi or LTE connectivity could be used for tele-presence and remote control. Our adaptive video streaming solution can tolerate bandwidth variation while driving over the Internet and wireless connection. This is the only embedded adaptive video streaming solution we are aware of. Open-source software, hardware and 3D printable robot body allows endless possibilities for customization. More details could be found at http://veterobot.org . Test drive virtual Veterobot here: https://sungreen.github.io/projects/veterbot/veterbot.htm (use arrow keys to move and T to change chassis)

Details

Which needs does the project fulfill?

Researchers starting in the fields of robotics, AI and computer vision usually spend considerable amount of time to build robotic vehicle to verify their software ideas. Using our platform, they can focus on actual research instead of solving standard mechanical and low-level control issues.

Powered by recent developments in online education and growing interest in robotics, such as Stanford "Machine learning" course and Udacity's "Artificial Intelligence for Robotics", the demand on reasonably priced open robotics platform dramatically increased. With Veter robot we are offering great platform to fulfill this demand.

Competitive advantages of our platform

Comparing to existing and potential competitors our solution offers following advantages. In the hardware area we provide:

Longer autonomous operation time with easy replaceable battery.

Significantly higher processing power with onboard ARM CPU and advanced TI DSP.

Easy customizable 3D-printed body for integration of additional sensors and actuators.

Simple electronic built out of standard high level components.

Wide range of out-of-the-box sensors.

In the software area we provide:

Advanced communication infrastructure for cloud robotics.

Support for multiple programming languages.

Adaptive video streaming for remote operation over the Internet.

Set of examples for education scenarios.

By embracing open software and hardware paradigm we and our customers have access to vibrant and large community of developers and designers. By shifting complexity to the software and simplifying hardware we were able to reduce price to very competitive level.

Files

A.001.01.zip

x-zip-compressed - 10.48 MB - 07/19/2017 at 08:38

Download

S.203.04.stl

Standard Tesselated Geometry - 2.04 MB - 07/19/2017 at 08:38

Download

S.201.04.stl

Standard Tesselated Geometry - 2.35 MB - 07/19/2017 at 08:38

Download

S.204.04.stl

Standard Tesselated Geometry - 1.12 MB - 07/19/2017 at 08:38

Download

S.104.03.stl

Standard Tesselated Geometry - 6.47 MB - 07/19/2017 at 08:38

Download

Components

1 × Dagu Rover 5 Tracked Chassis with Encoders https://www.pololu.com/product/1551

1 × Sparkfun dual motor driver TB6612FNG

1 × Adafruit Level shifter 8 TXB0108

2 × Sparkfun Level converter COM-08745

1 × Break Away Male Headers - Right Angle 1x18 90

Project Logs

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Real-time video processing for autonomous drive
andreynech • 07/24/2017 at 10:49 • 0 comments

Check out the following video where Veterobot autonomously search and approach the circle by processing video in real-time and using PID controller for smooth motion. More details and examples could be found here: http://veterobot.com/demos.html
Assemble everything together
andreynech • 07/24/2017 at 10:00 • 0 comments

Finally we are ready to assemble everything together. Checkout the following link for step-by-step instructions: https://github.com/veter-team/veter/wiki/assembling

And if everything goes well, here what comes out:
Order PCB and solder parts on the board
andreynech • 07/24/2017 at 09:57 • 0 comments

The whole set of Eagle files (including libraries designed with EAGLE
6.3 Lite) to ordert the PCB is available in veter-cap
repository. For our boards, we are currently using services from PCB-POOL. You might consider different PCB manufacturer depending on you location.
Part list is created
andreynech • 07/24/2017 at 09:55 • 0 comments

We have put together the part list for electronics. Check out the following link on GitHub for the complete table: https://github.com/veter-team/veter/wiki/buy-parts
Decide which body to 3D print
andreynech • 07/24/2017 at 09:53 • 0 comments

We spent quite some time developing 3D printable body for the RP5 chassis. There are several requirements like make electronics easily accessible, sensors should be at the right place, it should be robust, etc. Here are several variants Sungreen has developed in Blender.
Check out this Blender forum gallery for more variants.

View all 5 project logs

Build Instructions

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3D print body

For more details, please see http://veterobot.org

We are constantly developing and improving our robot. As a result, the building instructions could quickly become outdated. However, our project wiki is kept up to date. That is why we decide to provide here high-level overview of required steps and refer to the corresponding wiki articles for more details.

3D print the robot's body. Currently we are using Ultimaker 3D printer. All the models (original Blender files and generated STL files) are freely available from our git repository.

Buy electronics

Buy electronic and mechanical parts. Our goal is to make electronics and mechanic of the robot as simple as possible. That is why we are using ready-available parts as much as we can.

Order PCB

Order PCB for daughter board. Daughter board is required to interface the on-board computer with sensors and actuators such as range finders and motor controllers. There are a lot of online shops providing PCB manufacturing services. Selection depends heavily on where you are. Since we are in Germany, we are currently using services from PCB-POOL.

Discussions

Veterobot

Description

Details