Robotic Blogs

Cye, produced by Probotics, is currently the only home robot that can reliably navigate around a home or office. In fact, it navigates better than most research robots which cost upwards of $15,000.

Most robots use range finding and other sensors to move around and avoid obstacles, but these robots never know where they are exactly. On the contrary, Cye uses highly accurate positional sensors to generate a map of home/office, with minimum human help. He can track his movement on a map using a radio link to PC. (A sample map is shown.) Due to this, Cye always knows his exact location and can roam around precisely just like a human.

In order to get Cye installed and running, the first thing is to find an open corner as its base. Attach the radio modem to PC’s serial port, and then install a program called “MapNZap”. After a brief initialization sequence, choose the robot’s orientation relative to the screen, and the direction of the nearest wall relative to Cye. After making the selections, Cye will back off his base, move to the closest wall and bump squarely against it. Then he turns and come back near the base/charger. Now Cye is ready to start exploring.

After roaming around the rooms/office, Cye is instructed to come back to the homebase. The robot rolls through the door from other rooms and right up to the charger. It will be slightly off and miss the charging station. Not perfect, but close enough for a robot. However, Cye will back away, move to the other wall and square against it, then come back and complete a PERFECT dock. Apparently, bumping the wall the charger is on zeroes out accumulated errors on one axis, and bumping the other wall (remember that the base must be placed in a corner) zeroes out errors along the other axis. If Cye can get anywhere near his base, he will dock with his charger every time.

Cye’s navigation success attributes to “Dead Reckoning”, the ability to navigate using positional data only. When it moves to another room, the computer calculates a viable path on the map and sends coordinates for Cye to follow. As Cye moves, his encoder sensors check velocity/distance of each wheel 500 times per second. The telemetry data is sent back to computer so that the robot position can be tracked relative to walls and other obstacles. Probotics claims about Cye’s dead reckoning capabilities, less than 5 degrees of orientation error after 50 feet of travel.

Cye is the best and most affordable home robot on the market.

An amazing navigator: It is the only robot that can reliably find and dock with a charger. Cye uses the corner near its homebase to zero out errors that have accumulated during its journey.

Affordable: It is less than half the cost of its closest competition. Although at a price of US$695, Cye is still much cheaper than other robots, which are priced lowest at US$2000.

Can Vacuum the House: Cye can reliably vacuum every room in a house at any time of the day or night. Cye's new Hoover cordless vacuum cleaner will keep the carpets clean even if you aren't at home. It charges when the robot does, so it will vacuum completely unattended!

Cye is Programmable: It can be programmed in Visual Basic or C++. With a few changes in the powerful but user friendly “MapNZap” software, the robot can go from room to room, play tunes, haul dishes and vacuuming.

Can add extra sensors and motors: Cye’s external port will be able to accept a microcontroller known as Handy Board. This will allow more sensors, motors and LEDs to be attached.

Cye is Educational: Playing with Cye will help people learn about the exciting world of robots and robotics. Both kids and adults will learn about navigation, dead reckoning, programming and many more.


http://www.personalrobots.com/home.html
http://www.pioneernet.net/johnc/cyemain.htm

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