The e-puck is a small differential wheeled

Differential wheeled robot

A differential wheeled robot is a mobile robot whose movement is based on two separately driven wheels placed on either side of the robot body...

 mobile robot

Mobile robot

A mobile robot is an automatic machine that is capable of movement in a given environment.-Overview:Mobile robots have the capability to move around in their environment and are not fixed to one physical location...

. It was originally designed for micro-engineering education by Michael Bonani and Francesco Mondada

Francesco Mondada

Francesco Mondada is a Swiss researcher in artificial intelligence and robotics. He is one of the creators of the Khepera, the S-bot and the e-puck mobile robots. He got a Master's degree in Microengineering at the EPFL in 1991 and a Ph.D. degree in 1997.He was the director of from its creation...

 at the ASL laboratory of Prof. Roland Siegwart at EPFL (Lausanne

Lausanne

Lausanne is a city in Romandy, the French-speaking part of Switzerland, and is the capital of the canton of Vaud. The seat of the district of Lausanne, the city is situated on the shores of Lake Geneva . It faces the French town of Évian-les-Bains, with the Jura mountains to its north-west...

, Switzerland

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

).
The e-puck is open hardware and its onboard software is open source

Open source

The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...

, and is built and sold by several companies.

Technical details

• Diameter: 70 mm
• Height: 50 mm
• Weight: 200 g
• Max speed: 13 cm/s
• Autonomy: 2 hours moving
• dsPIC 30
  PIC microcontroller
  PIC is a family of Harvard architecture microcontrollers made by Microchip Technology, derived from the PIC1650 originally developed by General Instrument's Microelectronics Division...
  
   CPU @ 30 MHz (15 MIPS)
• 8 KB RAM
• 144 KB Flash
  Flash memory
  Flash memory is a non-volatile computer storage chip that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. It was developed from EEPROM and must be erased in fairly large blocks before these can be rewritten with new data...
  
  
• 2 step motors
  Stepper motor
  A stepper motor is a brushless, electric motor that can divide a full rotation into a large number of steps. The motor's position can be controlled precisely without any feedback mechanism , as long as the motor is carefully sized to the application...
  
  
• 8 infrared
  Infrared
  Infrared light is electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength longer than that of visible light, measured from the nominal edge of visible red light at 0.74 micrometres , and extending conventionally to 300 µm...
  
   proximity
  Proximity sensor
  A proximity sensor is a sensor able to detect the presence of nearby objects without any physical contact.A proximity sensor often emits an electromagnetic or a beam of electromagnetic radiation , and looks for changes in the field or return signal. The object being sensed is often referred to as...
  
   and light (TCRT1000)
• color camera
  Digital camera
  A digital camera is a camera that takes video or still photographs, or both, digitally by recording images via an electronic image sensor. It is the main device used in the field of digital photography...
  
  , 640x480
• 8 LEDs
  LEDS
  LEDS can be initials for:* Law Enforcement Data System* Link Eleven Display System* Low Energy Dislocation Structure* Land Electronic Defence System * LEDs * Life-Events and Difficulties Schedule...
  
   in ring + one body LED + one front LED
• 3D accelerometers
• 3 microphones
• 1 loudspeaker
  Loudspeaker
  A loudspeaker is an electroacoustic transducer that produces sound in response to an electrical audio signal input. Non-electrical loudspeakers were developed as accessories to telephone systems, but electronic amplification by vacuum tube made loudspeakers more generally useful...
  
  

Extensions

New modules can be stacked on top of the e-puck; the following extensions are available:

• a turret that simulates 1D omni-directional vision, to study optic flow,
• ground sensors, for instance to follow a line,
• color LED turret, for color-based communication,
• ZigBee
  ZigBee
  ZigBee is a specification for a suite of high level communication protocols using small, low-power digital radios based on an IEEE 802 standard for personal area networks. Applications include wireless light switches, electrical meters with in-home-displays, and other consumer and industrial...
  
   communication,
• 2D Omni-directional vision,
• magnetic wheels, for vertical climbing.

Scientific use

Since the e-puck is open hardware, its price is lower than competitors. This is leading to a rapid adoption by the scientific community in research despite the original educational orientation of the robot.
The e-puck has been used in collective roboticshttp://infoscience.epfl.ch/getfile.py?docid=12417&name=JP_icra07&format=pdf&version=1 http://infoscience.epfl.ch/getfile.py?docid=13861&name=JP_cec2007&format=pdf&version=1 http://infoscience.epfl.ch/getfile.py?recid=99957&mode=best, evolutionary robotics

Evolutionary robotics

Evolutionary robotics is a methodology that uses evolutionary computation to develop controllers for autonomous robots. Algorithms in ER frequently operate on populations of candidate controllers, initially selected from some distribution. This population is then repeatedly modified according to...

 http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=4218883, and art-oriented roboticshttp://www.student.bth.se/~jekn05/JK_Thesis.pdf http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1278280.1278288http://adb.sagepub.com/content/17/3/179.abstract.

External links

• Homepage - the e-puck project homepage
• e-puck at Mobots - the e-puck homepage at Mobots, the group who developed the e-puck
• e-puck at gna - the gna
  Gna.org
  Gna! is a centralized location where software developers can develop, distribute and maintain free software.- History:In the beginning, GNA stood for "Gna's Not Axis"...
  
  page of e-puck onboard software
• Cyberbotics' robot curriculum - a robotics curriculum based on the e-puck robot