“Home-made” mobile robotic platforms used for teaching robotics are mainly focused on Arduino microcontrollers which give limited functionality and processing in favour of its low cost. In this paper, a new more powerful solution is proposed. This work is focused in the design and development of a high performance robotic platform with medium cost. The main aim of the project is to develop a multisensorial platform capable of navigating in the environment in order to generate a map and reach a target without colliding.
The developed robot is expected to be much more powerful that “home-made” robots using Arduino and to have similar specifications to Turtlebot platform. This high-processing capabilities are reached thanks to a tiny on-board Single Board Computer in the robot. This mobile robot is designed in differential configuration over a circular platform and controlled using odometry and a depth sensor. All the information is transmitted using the firmware ROS (Robot Operating System), which provides many functionalities thanks to the open-software community behind it as well as easy-integration with self-programmed nodes.
Finally, regarding the experimental results of the project, the platform has been built and tested in several environments generating a 2D map. Based on the results, very positive conclusion can be obtained.