Research with the Surveyor robot

The Surveyor robot is a moderately cheap robot with ad-hoc WIFI connection and a camera on-board. We mounted a laser on front which projects a red line in the forward direction. The default lasers are just point lasers, and do not project a line. We subsequently test our software using camera and laser information together (so-called sensor fusion).

Normally the robot will not be able to make a distiction between a fake and a real power outlet. However, with the additional distance information from the laser, it can! You will hear the robot respond to the real power outlet.

This research robot is available in our webshop because it is really good for research that involves a robot camera. The robot contains a Blackfin microcontroller which can run uCLinux. However, the person responsible for this left the Surveyor Corporation, and so uCLinux support faded away. Still, there is a lot of documentation online and it is not hard to flash the robot with this OS. The WIFI on the robot is via a Lantronix chip. This solution works fine for connecting to the robot wirelessly, however do not assume that it will be easy to have two robots communicate with each other. Summarized: buy this robot if you want to do image processing experiments on a single robot.