Low-cost high-performance mobile robot design utilizing off-the-shelf parts and the Beowulf concept: the Beobot project

Abstract

Utilizing off the shelf low cost parts, we have constructed a robot that is small, light, powerful and relatively inexpensive (< $3900). The system is constructed around the Beowulf concept of linking multiple discrete computing units into a single cooperative system. The goal of this project is to demonstrate a new robotics platform with sufficient computing resources to run biologically-inspired vision algorithms in real-time. This is accomplished by connecting two dual-CPU embedded PC motherboards using fast gigabit Ethernet. The motherboards contain integrated Firewire, USB and serial connections to handle camera, servomotor, GPS and other miscellaneous inputs/outputs. Computing systems are mounted on a servomechanism-controlled off-the-shelf "Off Road" RC car. Using the high performance characteristics of the car, the robot can attain relatively high speeds outdoors. The robot is used as a test platform for biologically-inspired as well as traditional robotic algorithms, in outdoor navigation and exploration activities. Leader following using multi blob tracking and segmentation, and navigation using statistical information and decision inference from image spectral information are discussed. The design of the robot is opensource and is constructed in a manner that enhances ease of replication. This is done to facilitate construction and development of mobile robots at research institutions where large financial resources may not be readily available as well as to put robots into the hands of hobbyists and help lead to the next stage in the evolution of robotics, a home hobby robot with potential real world applications.

Distributed biologically based real time tracking in the absence of prior target information

“…If one is going to track a flying grape fruit, then one would set a tracker with a certain color of yellow and some threshold about which the color can vary. In general, many newer trackers use statistical information about an objects features which allow one to define seemingly more natural boundaries for what features one would expect to find on a target (Mundhenk et al 2003a). However, in order to deploy such a tracker, one needs to find the features, which describe the object prior to tracking.…”

High-definition human visual attention mapping using wavelets

“…There are many applications that use saliency maps such as unsupervised image segmentation [20] [21] [15], robotic vision [22], image compression [3], surveillance [23], and object detection [24].…”

“…In [22], the authors used off-the-shelf parts to build a small, light, powerful, and inexpensive robot that uses visual attention to direct it; they called it the Beobot. It is titled as such because it is based on their lab's work on a system called Beowulf which links multiple computing units into a single cooperative system.…”

Design for Manufacture and Assembly in Off-Site Construction: Advanced Production of Modular Façade Systems

“… Interdisciplinary collaborations in the earlystage design. Previous research shows that at least 80% of total project costs are committed during concept design stage [9,10]. Project cost, time and quality of delivery will be optimised by involvement of design engineers, off-site manufacturers, assembly and on-site teams in early concept decisions [11].…”