LabRat™: Miniature Robot
LabRat TH v2.1
Original LabRat
LabRat™ TH v2.1 Released
The new LabRat is out! The new design uses all thru-hole components, so it can be purchased as a kit or assembled product.
What is LabRat™?
LabRat™ is a small, open-source robot designed to be used by students, researchers and hobbyists for a variety of applications.
What distinguishes LabRat™ from other small robot kits is an optical mouse sensor on the bottom of the robot, providing high-rate, high-accuracy position information, as well as the ability for instructors to incorporate machine vision into their courses, as the optical sensor is effectively a small CCD camera.
The LabRat™ design and documentation are released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. The LabRat™ Utilities Library is released under the GNU LGPL.
What is in LabRat™?
Labrat™ has several features that make it attractive to
students, researchers and hobbyists. There are many ways to
communicate between LabRat™ and other devices through
wire, infrared and radio methods.
The LabRat™ has the following features:
- Atmel AtMega324p AVR
- Three infrared LEDs (Two IR Bumpers, One 4.7Kbps IR Serial Communication Link)
- One wide-angle infrared receiver
- Two whiskers for tactical sensing
- Optical sensor for position detection
- Two serial ports
- xBee capable
What can LabRat™ be used for?
The first use of LabRat™ was as an educational tool for the Introduction to Robotics Class at the Missouri University of Science and Technology. Students started out by programming a simulated LabRat™ in Player/Stage. The simulation realistically portrayed the sensors and capabilities of LabRat™ so that the students would be more familiar with the platform when they received the robots later in the semester.
You can also use LabRat™ to:
- Teach your students how to program on an embedded, interactive platform
- Perform swarm robotics experiments
- Program an automated cat toy (NOTE: RollaEng is not responsible for feline-induced damage to robot, property, or self)
- Create new mapping algorithms using the infrared sensors
- Attach XBees and build a mobile sensor network
- Connect a Gumstix to the serial port to create a powerful computing platform
- Learn robotics!
Resources
More information about the LabRat™ can be found below
