CEPI: A low cost and open source mobile robot platform for research and education

Abstract

The emerging applications of coordination and cooperation between mobile robots, as well as interaction between mobile robots and humans, demands for an early and well designed robotic education. In addition, research and development in this area needs to be supported with an-easy-to-implement mobile robot platform. An availability of a low-cost and open source mobile robots will be beneficial, especially in a development country such as Indonesia. In this paper we propose a low cost and open source mobile robot platform that can be used for education and research specific in mobile robots and coordination between the robots. The “low cost” is defined as the availability and easiness to find the components in Indonesia or at least easily found in online shop. The “open source” means that the resulting design and implementation can be accessed in open source library and follow the GNU license. The first generation of the robot has been validated in terms of individual sensor and performance. The platform has been extended up to second generation and is used in different applications such as indoor mapping and remote control manipulation.