6.1 Overview of the robot
Figure 6.1: The e-puck robot at work
E-puck was designed to fulfill the following requirements:
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Elegant design: the simple mechanical structure, electronics design and software of e-puck is an example of a clean and modern system.
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Flexibility: e-puck covers a wide range of educational activities, offering many possibilities with its sensors, processing power and extensions.
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Simulation software: e-puck is integrated with Webots simulation software for easy programming, simulation and remote control of the (physical) robot.
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User friendly: e-puck is small and easy to setup on a tabletop next to a computer. It doesn't need any cables, providing optimal working comfort.
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Robustness and maintenance: e-puck is resilient under student use and is simple to repair.
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Affordable: the price tag of e-puck is friendly to university budgets.
E-puck is equipped with a large number of devices, as summarized in table 6.1.
| Description | |
| Size | about 7 cm in diameter |
| Battery | about 3 hours with the provided 5Wh LiION rechargeable battery |
| Processor | Microchip dsPIC 30F6014A @ 60MHz (about 15 MIPS) |
| Motors | 2 stepper motors with 20 steps per revolution and a 50:1 reduction gear |
| IR sensors | 8 infra-red sensors measuring ambient light and proximity of obstacles in a 4 cm range |
| Camera | color camera with a maximum resolution of 640x480 (typical use: 52x39 or 640x1) |
| Microphones | 3 omni-directional microphones for sound localization |
| Accelerometer | 3D accelerometer along the X, Y and Z axis |
| LEDs | 8 red LEDs on the ring and one green LED on the body |
| Speaker | on-board speaker capable of playing WAV or tone sounds. |
| Switch | 16 position rotating switch |
| Bluetooth | Bluetooth for robot-computer and robot-robot wireless communication |
| Remote Control | infra-red LED for receiving standard remote control commands |
| Expansion bus | expansion bus to add new possibilities to your robot |
| Programming | C programming with the GNU GCC compiler system |
| Simulation | Webots STD or EDU facilitates the programming of e-puck with a powerful simulation, remote control and cross-compilation system. |
Table 6.1: e-puck features
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