Friday, May 10, 2013

New Official Arduino Robot Coming Out

A new robot system is being introduced by the Arduino team.

Earlier thought to be the Logo robot (due to a video post title), it is now just the Arduino Robot.

Specifications

The robot has two motorized wheels and gearboxes.  It has two decks (lower for motors and sensors, upper for sensors and display).  It appears to share the upcoming 1.8 inch TFT LCD display module destined for use on the Esplora.  There is a buzzer, rotary encoder, 8 Tinkerkit inputs (upper deck), and USB port on the top deck, possibly more below.  This would imply a fair number of microprocessor pins, perhaps the Mega or even Due processor onboard (the Mega would be a better guess)?


New: There are several videos of this robot, all at http://vimeo.com/user433152
  1. Line following May 11th p.m. http://vimeo.com/65925980
  2. The test with Logo-type programming released May 11th http://vimeo.com/65901813
  3. Discobot test (2 weeks earlier) http://vimeo.com/64912650
  4. Hello user (2 weeks earlier) http://vimeo.com/64761574
  5. Line Following (2 weeks earlier) http://vimeo.com/64728217 (which if it is following a line at the same speed as the video, it would be impressive.  Is the line follower sensor stock or a Tinkerkit sensor?)
  6. Music for the robot (1 month earlier) http://vimeo.com/62336645
The bots apparently are being developed in Malmo, Sweden.   Known collaborators:
Collaboration on this project, including prototype work and code, has been done by Complubot in Spain.  Their page is at http://complubot.educa.madrid.org/pre/pre.php

Side View showing motors and gear boxes.

Prototype Work: The Lottie Lemon

It would appear that some details on this platform have been available since Maker Faire 2011 (when the Due and Leonardo were discussed).  There is a picture here but it would appear that things have evolved since.

The Arduino Robot looks like prototypes nicknamed the Lottie Lemon also in cooperation with Complubot.  There are pictures here, and a video here.  The Lemon appears to use two Arduino Nano units whereas the new Arduino Robot has on-board processor(s).  More information on the Lottie Lemon is on the Arduino Wiki here and a comprehensive video from Complubot on the Lottie Lemon (Spanish with English subtitles) is here.

The final prototypes, based more on the Arduino Robot board set, appear to have been tested at Robocup 2012.  Pictures and information are here.
The Lottie Lemon boards - note the display is a Nokia type and the processor looks like an Arduino Nano in a socket.


More details as I get them.

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