E-puck Mobile Robot
e-puck Mobile Robot
The e-puck is a very capable little differential-drive mobile robot with two stepper-motor-controlled wheels, a VGA camera, a ring of IR proximity sensors, a number of LEDs, a 3-axis accelerometer, microphones, and bluetooth communication, all controlled by a 16-bit Microchip PIC (dsPIC30F6014A). We have a few of them in the mechatronics lab.
The e-puck page is http://www.e-puck.org, and it is the primary source for all updated information on the e-puck. Here we simply keep some local helpful hints on getting started with the e-puck, along with a snapshot of some of the e-puck software from November 2007. See [1] for the most up-to-date information!
To get started, you need
- the Microchip MPLAB IDE under "Development Tools" at http://www.microchip.com to allow you to program the PIC with a PC
- the MPLAB C30 PIC30 C compiler, also under "Development Tools" at http://www.microchip.com
- the tiny bootloader that allows you to download your program to the PIC using bluetooth (from http://www.etc.ugal.ro/cchiculita/software/tinyblddownload.htm)
- the getting started documentation
- the e-puck tutorial files
(After you have success with the tutorial, you will soon want the libraries and more extensive demo programs from http://www.e-puck.org. A snapshot of these as of November 2007 is [[Media:E-puck-snapshot.tar.gz|here], and these will be referred to below.)
Now follow the instructions on
