Apeiros [“ah.pay.ross”]
During my time as an undergraduate mechanical engineering student I was introduced to robots and since then I have been designing, building and testing robots for use in academic and industrial applications. As part of my doctoral research I designed and validated a robot that was used as a tool for teaching Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) and as a tool for swarm robotics research. I have done my best to design Apeiros, so that it is low-cost, flexible, and entirely open source. I have named my robot Apeiros because I believe that learning should be boundless.
The “brains” of Apeiros is the chipKIT(TM) UNO32(TM) development board by Digilent(R) Inc. I have designed Apeiros to be low-cost and easy-to-use, but also flexible and forward compatible with add-on boards that are commonly referred to as shields in the Arduino(TM) community. Apeiros is entirely open source, so that anyone can create their own shields, but I have already designed and tested a total of (4) add-on shields: (1) Motor control & IR sensors, (2) Gripper control & line following sensors, (3) Vision & SRAM Memory shield and (4) WiFi & light sensor shield. I plan to work on releasing the WiFi, Gripper and Vision+Memory add-on shields after delivering all the rewards associated with this project’s Kickstarter campaign.
Kickstarter Campaign launched Jan 19 – Feb 17, 2014
Apeiros has been designed to be entirely open source. Design documentation for the electrical and mechanical hardware along with the source code for all of the software will be made available. In this way, end-users can easily modify and customize their robot. You can also delve into the design details and learn why. For example, you can examine the 3D body design and observe part draft and learn why it is critical when designing a part to be manufactured using the injection molding process. Examine the Vision & Memory shield PCB design and see how to interface with SRAM via Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI). The learning opportunities are truly boundless!
More information: www.abotics.com
