ZARCO is a mobile robotic platform for education, research and real world applications. With this fully-featured omnidirectional three-wheeled robot, ZARCO’s range of applications includes exploration, surveillance, networked robotics and human-robot cooperation.
To extend ZARCO’s functionalities, you must first connect to it and program it. ZARCO comes with an Arduino UNO and an OMNI-3MD controller so, to program it, you can simply download Arduino IDE, connect a USB cable to ZARCO’s board, and that’s it. Here is the installation process explained step-by-step:
- Go to https://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/Software and download the latest release of Arduino IDE
- Download the Omni3MD Arduino library here and install it as any other Arduino library. The manual of this library is available in the following link: http://botnroll.com/omni3md/
- Connect to ZARCO’s Arduino UNO board using a USB cable
- Install any regular Arduino drivers if necessary (those are available in the Arduino IDE folder installed on your computer)
For high-level programming, and to further extend ZARCO’s functionalities, one can benefit from the ARM CPU BeagleBone Black (BBB) equipped on the platform. To have access to the BBB, simply follow the steps in http://beagleboard.org/getting-started. Once connected to the BBB through SSH, use the following login:
- username: ubuntu
- password: temppwd
For instance, the user can gain access to the installed camera (videodevice /dev/video0) through the BBB and use it for surveillance purposes (e.g., robot patrolling). ZARCO’s BBB uses the Motion package, which supports motion detection. ZARCO’s streaming video can be accessed directly through the network as http://BBB_IP:8081.
That's it - Enjoy!
After following the installation steps, test the square.ino example located in arduino/examples/ to make sure all libraries are adequately installed. If everything goes as expected, you should see ZARCO following a square trajectory.
Arduino GPS shield is a GPS module breadout board designed for Global Positioning System receiver with SD interface. It is easy to use for recording the position data into SD card. 5V/3.3V compatible operation voltage level make it compatible with Arduino boards, leaf maple, IFlat32 and other arduino compatible boards. For more info, datasheets and example code check the following link.