E-puck mobile robot

The e-puck is a small (7 cm) 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 (Lausanne, Switzerland). The e-puck is open hardware and its onboard software is open-source, and is built^[1] and sold^[2] 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 (15 MIPS)
8 KB RAM
144 KB Flash
2 step motors
8 infrared proximity and light (TCRT1000)
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:^[3]

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.^[4] This is leading to a rapid adoption by the scientific community in research^[5] despite the original educational orientation of the robot. The e-puck has been used in collective robotics [1] [2] [3], evolutionary robotics [4], and art-oriented robotics [5]^{[permanent dead link]} [6][7].

References

^ GCtronic and AAI Archived 2007-12-12 at the Wayback Machine
^ Cyberbotics Archived 2009-02-13 at the Wayback Machine, RoadNarrows Robotics Archived 2011-07-12 at the Wayback Machine, and K-Team
^ see extensions section at e-puck.org
^ the e-puck costs around 950 CHF at time of writing, while the Khepera is around 3000 CHF
^ A search on Google scholar of e-puck + mobile + robot returns 528 papers (2012-01-05)

External links

Homepage - the e-puck project homepage
e-puck at Mobots - the e-puck homepage at Mobots, the group who developed the e-puck
e-puck at gna - the gna page of e-puck onboard software
e-puck model - Documentation of the e-puck model in the Webots robotics simulator.
Cyberbotics' robot curriculum - a robotics curriculum based on the e-puck robot
[8] - epuck2 MATLAB kernel

[producer-1] GCtronic and AAI Archived 2007-12-12 at the Wayback Machine

[resellers-2] Cyberbotics Archived 2009-02-13 at the Wayback Machine, RoadNarrows Robotics Archived 2011-07-12 at the Wayback Machine, and K-Team

[3] see extensions section at e-puck.org

[price-comparaison-4] the e-puck costs around 950 CHF at time of writing, while the Khepera is around 3000 CHF

[adoption-5] A search on Google scholar of e-puck + mobile + robot returns 528 papers (2012-01-05)

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]