Mechanical Ants - autonomous delivery robots

Robaka v1

Robaka v2

STAGE 4 - March 2021 design update

Hardware:

  • Added LCD for status indication

  • Moved D435 from the mast to front of the robot, to enable "stacked boxes" configuration

  • Added emergency stop button

Software:

  • AR tag follower

  • Smoother motor control with PWM mode



2021-03-10

STAGE 3 - April 2020 design update

Hardware:

  • Added 10 Hz GPS receiver for outdoor coarse localization

  • Added manual teleoperation using PS4 joystick via Bluetooth LE

  • Added Intel Realsense D435 camera on a mast, to compute driveable surface

  • Switched WiFi to AP mode for outdoor connectivity

  • Powered Jetson Nano from the hoverboard battery pack using 5V 4A DC-DC converter

  • Added fan for Jetson Nano - required to run heavy GPU loads

  • Added reset and power buttons for Nano

Software:

  • CNN-based image semantic segmentation to compute driveable surface

2020-05-01

STAGE 2 - July 2019 till September 2019: Robaka 2

Working on a bigger and more capable mobile platform, ready for some real payload. Here's the Medium article.

2019-09-19

STAGE 1 - May 2019 till July 2019: introduction to mobile robotics.

Working on a robocar platform based on NVIDIA Jetson Nano + Arduino, equipped with LIDAR, ultrasonic sensors, IMU, odometry sensors and camera. It's my ROS and SLAM testbed for indoor autonomy. Here's the Medium article about building the first prototype.

2019-07-22