Raspberry Pi Robot with PiShield, Part 1

Using the base from Tippy, I've started building a Raspberry Pi powered, sensor enabled robot. Currently, you can SSH into it and control it via the serial port. The original Arduino-based motor driver from Tippy is still there, but in theory we could just send out PWM and control signals from the Pi directly.

Main components:

- Raspberry Pi Zero with inline 2-port USB adapter:

- - Port 1: wifi dongle

- - Port 2: Arduino USB serial

- PiShield Sensor Interface (current Kickstart project here)

- 5000 mAh OCHO mobile power bank (1A and 2.1A outputs).

- Arduino and Sparkfun motor driver. Its been a few years since I ordered that part. This one has two channels with PWM input for each channel for speed control. There are now ones that fit directly on the Raspberry Pi as well which could be more convenient to use...

- Tamiya Track and wheel set. Really handy little platform for making a basic tracked robot. One of the cheapest options out there too.

My idea is to add sensors to the PiShield, and then have it react to local environment conditions in addition to receiving wireless commands. The software I'm running on the Pi is the latest minibian, which usually boots up and gets an IP from my router in about 10~15 seconds.

Could this have been done on an Arduino or even an ESP8266 based board? Sure - but its kinda neat to be able to run linux on-board in a relatively compact package. Stay tuned for more updates!

p.s. apologies to /r/cablemanagement. This part is clearly not my strong suit... ;)

Tippy for ICEC 2011

What is Tippy?

Tippy:

- is a Telepresence Robot

- has a simple microcontroller-based drive system

- runs on ANY mobile device with a front facing camera and 2-way video application (such as Skype)

- uses optic coupling to provide a novel interface between the mobile device and drive control hardware

- does not require any other mobile app for operation

- costs less than $100 in parts (excluding iPod touch) if you build it yourself

Tippy allows the user to achieve telepresence by leveraging powerful, existing mobile devices quickly and easily. Tippy can be easily packaged into other formats using different sized devices (smartphones, handhelds and tablets) without custom mobile applications and the control scheme can be adapted to control any kind of external hardware.

For more information, take a look at our conference paper HERE.

To see Tippy in action, check out the following video:

If you're interested in finding out more, please find our contact info here!

Tippy the Telepresence Robot

So Vincent, Benny and I have been working on a cute little project over the past few weeks. It's a compact telepresence robot, similar to the one that the famous Johnny Lee wrote an instructional for on his procrastineering blog. The key factor of our design is the optical coupling between the mobile device and the robot control hardware: in our implementation, we use Skype for two-way video but embed the control signals in the video stream as well - thereby reducing the amount of development (in terms of hardware and software interfacing). We've submitted an ICEC demo paper along with the following video, which should do a slightly better job at explaining how it works:


We hope to get together an instructional, and a DIY kit soon so people in the community can play around with the idea (if the video isn't enough to get you going :)

A few points on my personal motivation/comments for this project:

1.) Robots are cool; telepresence robots are also cool.

2.) Mobile devices are so powerful these days that you can do so much with them. However, for the DIY hobbyist/hacker, it's not that easy to interface these devices with custom hardware that you build. For example, on an iOS device (iPhone, iTouch, iPad etc), you are quite limited when it comes to interfacing hardware. Even if you do have a developer license, it's still pretty hard to get a physical connection to the serial port working (at the risk of voiding the warranty and blowing up the device, etc). Using platforms such as Android does away with the license hurdle, but the hardware interface is still not easy. This project is essentially a demonstration at a quick and dirty (but working!) solution to this problem. There are many ways that it can be improved (e.g. modulating the visual signal, auto-calibration of the sensors, etc etc), but it should provide a good starting point.

3.) I'm surrounded by a bunch of amazing people with different skills and really appreciate the opportunity to work with them. This project was definitely worth the evenings and weekends we spent at home or in the lab tinkering away. Good job guys!