e-puck robot ( an open hardware platform based on dsPIC30F6014A )
http://www.e-puck.org/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1An educational robot
The main goal of this project is to develop a miniature mobile robot for educational purposes at university level. To achieve this goal the robot needs, in our opinion, the following features:
Good structure. The robot should have a clean mechanical structure, simple to understand. The electronics, processor structure and software has to be a good example of a clean modern system.
Flexibility. The robot should cover a large spectrum of educational activities and should therefore have a large potential in its sensors, processing power and extensions. Potential educational fields are, for instance, mobile robotics, real-time programming, embedded systems, signal processing, image or sound feature extraction, human-machine interaction or collective systems.
User friendly. The robot should be small and easy to exploit on a table next to a computer. It should need minimal wiring, battery operation and optimal working confort.
Good robustness and simple maintenance. The robot should resist to student use and be simple and cheap to repair.
Cheap. The robot, for large use, should be cheap (450-550 euros)
An open hardware platform
To help the creation of a community inside and outside EPFL, the project is based on an open hardware concept, where all documents are distributed and submitted to a license allowing everyone to use and develop for it.
