Robots in Our Lab
Part of my graduate work at UCSB was setting up a multi-robot test bed for experiments and testing of algorithms developed in our lab. Our main testbed consists of three Erratic mobile robots from Videre Design with Hokuyo URG laser rangefinders. All of our research robots run Ubuntu linux and we use Player/Stage both for simulations and controlling the hardware. For obstacle avoidance we have developed the Smooth Nearness Diagram navigation driver for Player/Stage, which can be found on the code page.
Check out my video page for videos of our robots in action. You can also find out more about how we have used our robots for teaching and mentoring during the summer session in this case study.
Our robot "unit" embarks on a tour of the lab to test the SND obstacle avoidance method, July 2010.