We have two of these Nomad 200 mobile robots, which are designed and
manufactured by Nomadic Technologies of Mountain View, CA. Ours are
serial numbers 19 and 20, so we are hoping that some day they will
become collectors' items. The picture to the right is not actual size;
each robot is about four feet tall, two feet in diameter, and weighs,
uh... a lot. The robots' names are Rocky and Squeaky, based on their
peculiar behaviors (one shakes and the other makes noises).
Each robot has a tactile bumper, a ring of 16 ultrasonic sensors, and a laser ranging system. One also has a ring of 16 infrared proximity sensors. In our current work, we do not use the sonar or infrared sensors. We also equip them with cameras, typically one pointing forward (to track moving objects) and one pointing up (to detect and localize landmark patterns drawn on the ceiling).
Rocky robot's onboard computation is provided by two 166Mhz Pentium-based PC-compatible running Linux. Squeaky robot has a single Pentium 90 Processor. Each contains cards to interface with its various sensors. In additional to sonar and bump sensors, Rocky is equipped with two CCD cameras connected to a PCI Matrox Meteor framegrabber and Squeaky is equipped with a laser range sensor.
The robots communicate with our workstations via radio ethernet. We have designed an abstract C++ class to represent the robot from a programmer's point of view.