Building advanced robotics platform using open hardware, software and 3D pinting by Andrey Nechypurenko

Motivation
Demos
VETER
robotics vehicle for researchers and makers
Andrey Nechypurenko
Maksym Parkachov
Nikolay Nikolaev
January, 2013
http://veterobot.com , mailto: veterobot@gmail.com VETER - robotics vehicle for researchers and makers

Motivation
Demos
Market overview
Addressing the demand
Technical details
Demand for robotics products and professionals
According to ABI research data, worldwide telepresence market is going to reach
$13.1 billion by the end of 2016.
Recruiters posted more than 2,100 online job ads for robotics skills in January of
2012, growing 44% versus 2011, according to WANTED Analytics.
Acording to BCC Research, the global demand for robots and robot-related
products was worth around $21 billion in 2010. The market is expected to grow
to nearly $22 billion in 2011 and $30 billion by 2016, a compound annual growth
rate (CAGR) of 6.7% between 2011 and 2016.
Not enough robotics professionals available to cover the market demand.

Motivation
Demos
Market overview
Technical details
Open and free education initiative by robotics experts
World-wide famous robotics experts such as Sebastian Thrun, Andrew Ng, Peter
Norwig and many others are creating free online education portals. They deliver
top-level education to the huge audience for free.
As a result, the amount of students interested in robotics is growing dramatically.
They in turn, demand for accessible, yet powerfull, platform to experiment with.

Motivation
Demos
Market overview
Technical details
Veter-robot addresses the demand of researchers
Our Veter robotics platform addresses the demand from students, researchers and
hobby robotics enthusiasts by oﬀering accessible, powerful and highly customizable
platform for experiments and fun. By embracing the open-source ideology in hardware
and software areas the project has the potential to attract wide audience.

Motivation
Demos
Market overview
Technical details
Key requirements
At the first step we are targeting researches in robotics, artificial intelligence and
computer vision as well as hobby robotics enthusiasts. For this purposes, we identified
and addressed the following key requirements:
should be complete open (hardware and software)
equipped with typical and widely used set of sensors
easy customizable to integrate new or different types of sensors and actuators
energy efficient yet powerful on-board computer
provide bi-directional communication link to transmit sensor and control data in
real-time
set of software modules which support distributed data processing and provide
hardware abstraction layer. It should let developers concentrate on experiments
and applications of their core competences
considerably lower cost comparing to the similar available products
To address these requirements we decide for the following solutions.

Motivation
Demos
Market overview
Technical details
Chassis and body
We are using Dagu Rover 5 Tracked Chassis with two motors and two quadrature
encoders. The whole body is 3D-printed and provides:
rotated ”head” (to mount camera on it)
folding mast for EMS-sensitive sensors (such as, for example, digital compass)
place for exchangeable batteries
”doors” to access the inside electronic connectors
extension options for additional electronic, sensors and actuators
Application of the 3D printing signiﬁcantly simpliﬁes customization of the body.

Motivation
Demos
Market overview
Technical details
Easy customizable
Application of 3D printing technology allows easy customization for particular project
needs.

Motivation
Demos
Market overview
Technical details
Sensors and on-board electronic
In the full conﬁguration the following
sensors are available:
four ultra-sound range ﬁnders (on the
sides, front and back)
two video cameras
pan/tilt compensated digital compass
GPS receiver
The front sonar and cameras could be mounted on the ”head” which is rotated by the
servo motor. All peripheral devices are connected to the on-board computer over USB
and connectors provided by the daughter board. Current robot version uses TI’s
BeagleBoard-xM as on-board computer. BeagleBoard provides enough power to
compress video stream with H.264 codec in real-time, control the hardware and run
advanced navigation algorithms.

Motivation
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Market overview
Technical details
Interfacing sensors and actuators
We developed our own daughter board to interface all sensors and acutators.

Motivation
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Market overview
Technical details
Software
The whole software is open-source and is available on git-hub. We oﬀer the complete
stack from operating system up to communication infrastructure and client-side user
interface and visualization applications.
we provide customized image based on popular Angstrom Linux
distribution which is optimized for the the BeagleBoard.
we are using Xenomai Linux real-time extension for motor
control and other time-sensitive tasks.
sensors and actuators are remotely accessible (over the network)
using corresponding software components.
for all remoting purposes we are using ZeroC’s Ice (Internet
Communication Engine) middleware.
it allows developers to use wide range of programming
languages (C++, Python, Ruby, Java and all .Net-languages) to
develop own software components.
There is an OpenGL-based application ”cockpit” available to remotely control the
robot manually. Sensor data (including video from cameras) are rendered in real-time
and control commands are sent back to the vehicle.

Motivation
Demos
Market overview
Technical details
UI development
We are using our own COLLADA visualization library (with support for animation) to
decouple visualization and application logic.

Motivation
Demos
Market overview
Technical details
Examples and tutorials
To demonstrate how to develop solutions for typical problems from robotics domain
using our platform we implement several homework assignments from ”Programming
A Robotic Car” online course taught by Prof. Sebastian Thrun. These examples
illustrates the applicability of our platform in educational domain.
Unit1 - one-dimensional localization using histogram filter.
Unit2 - speed and position estimation with Kalman filter.
Unit3 - position estimation using particle filter.
Unit5 - motion control with PID-controller and Twiddle algorithm to find PID
parameters.

Motivation
Demos
Market overview
Technical details
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 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 shifting complexity to the software and simplifying hardware we were able to
reduce price to very competitive level.

Motivation
Demos
Videos
Camera-based motion control
PIDcontroller

Motivation
Demos
Videos
Particle ﬁlter
particleﬁlter

Building advanced robotics platform using open hardware, software and 3D pinting by Andrey Nechypurenko

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Building advanced robotics platform using open hardware, software and 3D pinting by Andrey Nechypurenko