The e-puck is a small (7 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 ...

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

Francesco Mondada Francesco Mondada (born 17 March 1967) is a Swiss professor in artificial intelligence and robotics. He got a Master's degree in Microengineering at the EPFL in 1991 and a PhD degree in 1997. He is one of the creators of the Khepera and directe ...

at the ASL laboratory of Prof. Roland Siegwart 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 Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...

). The e-puck is

open hardware Open-source hardware (OSH, OSHW) consists of physical artifacts of technology designed and offered by the open-design movement. Both free and open-source software (FOSS) and open-source hardware are created by this open-source culture movement ...

and its onboard software is

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

, and is builtGCtronic
an
AAI
and soldCyberbotics

, an
K-Team
/ref> 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

CPU A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor, or just processor, is the primary processor in a given computer. Its electronic circuitry executes instructions of a computer program, such as arithmetic, log ...

@ 30

MHz The hertz (symbol: Hz) is the unit of frequency in the International System of Units (SI), often described as being equivalent to one event (or cycle) per second. The hertz is an SI derived unit whose formal expression in terms of SI base u ...

(15 MIPS) * 8 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 ...

* 144 KB

Flash Flash, flashes, or FLASH may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional aliases * The Flash, several DC Comics superheroes with super speed: ** Flash (Jay Garrick) ** Barry Allen ** Wally West, the first Kid Flash and third adult Flash ...

* 2 step motors * 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 light (TCRT1000) * color

camera A camera is an instrument used to capture and store images and videos, either digitally via an electronic image sensor, or chemically via a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. As a pivotal technology in the fields of photograp ...

, 640x480 * 8

LEDs A light-emitting diode (LED) is a semiconductor device that emits light when current flows through it. Electrons in the semiconductor recombine with electron holes, releasing energy in the form of photons. The color of the light (correspo ...

in ring + one body LED + one front LED * 3D

accelerometers An accelerometer is a device that measures the proper acceleration of an object. Proper acceleration is the acceleration (the rate of change of velocity) of the object relative to an observer who is in free fall (that is, relative to an inertia ...

* 3

microphones A microphone, colloquially called a mic (), or mike, is a transducer that converts sound into an electrical signal. Microphones are used in many applications such as telephones, hearing aids, public address systems for concert halls and publi ...

* 1

loudspeaker A loudspeaker (commonly referred to as a speaker or, more fully, a speaker system) is a combination of one or more speaker drivers, an enclosure, and electrical connections (possibly including a crossover network). The speaker driver is an ...

Extensions

New modules can be stacked on top of the e-puck; the following extensions are available:se
extensions section at e-puck.org
/ref> * a turret that simulates 1D omnidirectional vision, to study

optic flow Optical flow or optic flow is the pattern of apparent motion of objects, surfaces, and edges in a visual scene caused by the relative motion between an observer and a scene. Optical flow can also be defined as the distribution of apparent velocit ...

, * ground sensors, for instance to follow a line, * color LED turret, for color-based communication, *

Zigbee Zigbee is an IEEE 802.15.4-based specification for a suite of high-level communication protocols used to create personal area networks with small, low-power digital radios, such as for home automation, medical device data collection, and oth ...

communication, * 2D omnidirectional vision, * magnetic wheels, for vertical climbing, * Pi-puck extension board, for interfacing with a

Raspberry Pi Raspberry Pi ( ) is a series of small single-board computers (SBCs) developed in the United Kingdom by the Raspberry Pi Foundation in collaboration with Broadcom Inc., Broadcom. To commercialize the product and support its growing demand, the ...

single-board computer A single-board computer (SBC) is a complete computer built on a single circuit board, with microprocessor(s), memory, input/output (I/O) and other features required of a functional computer. Single-board computers are commonly made as demonst ...

Scientific use

Since the e-puck is open hardware, its price is lower than competitors.the e-puck costs around 950 CHF at time of writing, while the Khepera is around 3000 CHF This is leading to a rapid adoption by the scientific community in researchA search on Google scholar of e-puck + mobile + robot
returns 528 papers (2012-01-05) despite the original educational orientation of the robot. The e-puck has been used in collective robotics

evolutionary robotics Evolutionary robotics is an embodied approach to Artificial Intelligence (AI) in which robots are automatically designed using Darwinian principles of natural selection. The design of a robot, or a subsystem of a robot such as a neural controller, ...

br>
and art-oriented robotic

http://adb.sagepub.com/content/17/3/179.abstract].

References

{{Reflist, 2

External links

Homepage
- the e-puck project homepage

- the e-puck homepage at Mobots, the group who developed the e-puck
e-puck at gna
- the Gna.org, gna page of e-puck onboard software
e-puck model
- Documentation of the e-puck model in the

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 ...

robotics simulator. * Cyberbotics' robot curriculum - a robotics curriculum based on the e-puck robot

- epuck2 MATLAB kernel Micro robots Robots of Switzerland Differential wheeled robots Open-source robots Multi-robot systems