Ricbot

Ricbot, a wheeled sensor platform

Ricbot is intended for fast deployment to areas of interest.

Main features:

• Reused motors and wheels from an old "Elector Wheelie" platform
• Designed to fit into a normal car for deployment, i.e can be disassembled to no more than 55cm in height.
• No more than 25-30 kg, requiring 1 or 2 persons to load or unload.
• Wheel-odometry recording (and timestamped)
• Camera image recording (and timestamped), the intention is Realsense D435.
• Maybe GNSS recording too.
• Manual remote control.

Tentative layout:

Length is 1m, free height 25cm, width 65cm.

Installation notes

Camera position

Forward-looking camera: Intel RealSense D455, FOV 87 x 58 deg, range 0.6 to 6m.

Down-looking camera: Intel RealSense D435, FOV: 87 x 58 deg, range 0.3 to 3m.

Cabling

DRI0042: https://wiki.dfrobot.com/15A_Single_DC_Motor_Driver_SKU__DRI0042

Regbot 6.3: Regbot hardware board

5V 5A: | Aliexpress link to device

DRI0042 to Regbot 4-pin PWM

DRI              Regbot PWM    Software
7 GND   (black)  1 GND         --
4 PWM   (red)    2 in1         PIN_xxxx_DIR
5 IN1   (white)  3 in2         PIN_xxxx_PWM
6 IN2   (yellow) 4 fault       PIN_xxxx_FAULT
3 5V out 

DRI0042 control values
IN1 	IN2 	PWM 	OUT1, OUT2 Motor Behavior
0 	0 	x 	Stop
1 	1 	x 	Vacant
1 	0 	1 	Forward 100%
0 	1 	1 	Reverse 100%
1 	0 	PWM 	Forward at PWM speed
0 	1 	PWM 	Reverse at PWM speed

Power control

Pin        IDC10-pin      Software       Function
1 (black)  1              --             GND
2 (red)    3              LS_1  (pin 27) power off (when low)
3 (white)  4              LS_0  (A6)     battery voltage  (39k/4.7k)
4 (yellow) 6              LS_4  (pin 26) Alive LED

Intel RealSense

Install

sudo apt-get install automake libtool libusb-1.0-0-dev libx11-dev xorg-dev libglu1-mesa-dev
sudo apt install libssl-dev

Library and examples

cd ~/git
git clone https://github.com/IntelRealSense/librealsense.git
cd librealsense
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make -j3
sudo make install

Copy udev rules to udev

cd ~/git/librealsense/config/99-realsense*.rules /etc/udev/rules.d/
udevadm control --reload-rules

All example commands start with rs-, e.g.:

rs-capture
rs-pointcloud

Teensy interface

The Teensy interface implements a bridge to MQTT, a motor controller (velocity and turn rate), and a remote control.

The configuration is in

/home/local/svn/teensy_interface/build/robot.ini

See also Robobot teensy interface.

Start at boot

See the similar start setup in [[1]].

Comment out (or delete) the start of the camera streamer (not compatible with RealSense 3D cam)

Install software on Raspberry Pi

Make same installation as