The Khepera is a small (5.5 cm)
differential wheeled mobile robot
A mobile robot is an automatic machine that is capable of locomotion.Hu, J.; Bhowmick, P.; Lanzon, A.,Group Coordinated Control of Networked Mobile Robots with Applications to Object Transportation IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, 202 ...
that was developed at the LAMI laboratory of Professor
Jean-Daniel Nicoud at
EPFL (
Lausanne
Lausanne ( , ; ; ) is the capital and largest List of towns in Switzerland, city of the Swiss French-speaking Cantons of Switzerland, canton of Vaud, in Switzerland. It is a hilly city situated on the shores of Lake Geneva, about halfway bet ...
, Switzerland) in the mid 1990s. It was developed by Edo. Franzi,
Francesco Mondada,
André Guignard and others.
Small, fast, and architectured around a Motorola 68331, it has served researchers for 10 years, widely used by over 500 universities worldwide.
Scientific impact
The Khepera was sold to a thousand research labs and featured on the cover of the 31 August 2000 issue of
Nature
Nature is an inherent character or constitution, particularly of the Ecosphere (planetary), ecosphere or the universe as a whole. In this general sense nature refers to the Scientific law, laws, elements and phenomenon, phenomena of the physic ...
. It appeared again in a 2003 article.
The Khepera helped in the emergence of
evolutionary robotics.
Technical details
Original version
* Diameter: 55 mm
* Height: 30 mm
* Empty weight: 80 g
* Speed: 0.02 to 1.0 m/s
* Autonomy: 45 minutes moving
*
Motorola 68331 CPU @ 16 MHz
* 256 KB
RAM
Ram, ram, or RAM most commonly refers to:
* A male sheep
* Random-access memory, computer memory
* Ram Trucks, US, since 2009
** List of vehicles named Dodge Ram, trucks and vans
** Ram Pickup, produced by Ram Trucks
Ram, ram, or RAM may also ref ...
* 512 KB
EEPROM
EEPROM or E2PROM (electrically erasable programmable read-only memory) is a type of non-volatile memory. It is used in computers, usually integrated in microcontrollers such as smart cards and remote keyless systems, or as a separate chip d ...
* Running ÎĽKOS RTOS
* 2
DC brushed servo motors with
incremental encoders
* 8
infrared
Infrared (IR; sometimes called infrared light) is electromagnetic radiation (EMR) with wavelengths longer than that of visible light but shorter than microwaves. The infrared spectral band begins with the waves that are just longer than those ...
proximity and ambient light sensors (SFH900)
2.0 Version
* Motorola 68331 CPU @ 25 MHz
* 512 KB RAM
* 512 KB Flash
* Improved batteries and sensors
3.0 Version
* 800 MHz ARM Cortex-A8 Processor
* Weight: 540g
* 256 MB RAM
* 512 MB plus additional 8GB for data
* Battery: 7.4V Lithium Polymer, 3400mAh
Extensions
Several extension turrets exist for the Khepera, including:
* Gripper
* 1D or 2D camera, wire or wireless
* Radio emitter/receiver, low and high speed
* I/0
See also
Webots
Webots is a free and open-source 3D robot simulator used in industry, education and research.
The Webots project started in 1996, initially developed by Dr. Olivier Michel at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) in Lausanne, Switzerl ...
– software that simulates and allows cross-compilation and remote control of the Khepera and other robots
References
;Notes
*
Mondada, F.,
Franzi, E.,
Guignard, A. (1999), ''The Development of Khepera''. In proceedings of First International Khepera Workshop, Paderborn, 10–11 December 1999
PDFBibTexEPFL Infoscience entry
External links
Homepage
– K-Team, the company which sells the Khepera robots
{{DEFAULTSORT:Khepera Mobile Robot
Prototype robots
Differential wheeled robots
Robots of Switzerland
Micro robots
Educational robots
1991 robots