E-puck mobile robot
[Image:E-puck-mobile-robot-photo.jpg|thumb|e-puck mobile robot]
The e-puck is a small differential wheeled mobile robot. It was originally designed for micro-engineering education by Michael Bonani and Francesco Mondada at the ASL laboratory of Prof. Roland Siegwart at EPFL.
The e-puck is open hardware and its onboard software is open-source, and is built and sold by several companies.
Technical details
- Diameter: 70 mm
- Height: 50 mm
- Weight: 200 g
- Max speed: 13 cm/s
- Autonomy: 2 hours moving
- dsPIC 30 CPU @ 30 MHz
- 8 KB RAM
- 144 KB Flash
- 2 step motors
- 8 infrared proximity and light
- color camera, 640x480
- 8 LEDs in ring + one body LED + one front LED
- 3D accelerometers
- 3 microphones
- 1 loudspeaker
Extensions
New modules can be stacked on top of the e-puck; the following extensions are available:- a turret that simulates 1D omnidirectional vision, to study optic flow,
- ground sensors, for instance to follow a line,
- color LED turret, for color-based communication,
- Zigbee communication,
- 2D omnidirectional vision,
- magnetic wheels, for vertical climbing,
- Pi-puck extension board, for interfacing with a Raspberry Pi single-board computer.
Scientific use
Since the e-puck is open hardware, its price is lower than competitors. This is leading to a rapid adoption by the scientific community in research despite the original educational orientation of the robot.The e-puck has been used in collective robotics, evolutionary robotics, and art-oriented robotics .