Embedded Robotics

The EyeBot controller and mobile robots have evolved over more than a decade. This book gives an in-depth introduction to embedded systems and autonomous mobile robots, using the EyeBot controller (EyeCon) and the EyeBot mobile robot family as application examples. This book combines teaching and research material and can be used for courses in Embedded Systems as well as in Robotics and Automation. We see labs as an essential teaching and learning method in this area and encourage everybody to reprogram and rediscover the algorithms and systems presented in this book. Although we like simulations for many applications and treat them in quite some depth in several places in this book, we do believe that students should also be exposed to real hardware in both areas, embedded systems and rob- ics. This will deepen the understanding of the subject area and of course create a lot more fun, especially when experimenting with small mobile robots. The original goal for the EyeBot project has been to interface an embedded system to a digital camera sensor (EyeCam), process its images locally in re- time for robot navigation, and display results on a graphics LCD. All of this started at a time before digital cameras came to the market - in fact the EyeBot controller was one of the first "e;embedded vision systems"e;.Internet support at http://robotics.ee.uwa.edu.au/eyebot/ with free download of: RoBIOS operating system, example programs, online documentation, simulator