Pioneer
The Pioneer is a mobile robot developed for research into environment sensing and navigation algorithms. The robot is driven by two variable speed, reversible motors which are connected to the wheels at the front the robot. A bank of seven sonar sensors provide the pioneer with the ability to detect and measure the proximity of obstacles in the environment (two sensors are positioned on the side and five face forward on the robot’s “head”). The robot is also fitted with a ‘gripper’ for manipulating small objects. The Robotics Lab is equipped with a set of Pioneer robots, some of which are also equipped with scanning laser range finders.
Katana Arm
The Katana arm is a six degree of freedom robotic manipulator used for research into kinematics and manipulation. Birmingham’s arm is equipped with a two finger gripper, the gripper has 15 sensors including infra-red (IR), force and contact sensors.
iRobot B21R
The B21r is an extremely powerful and sophisticated research robot. It is furnished with a wide range of sensors, including; Sonar and Infrared rangers, tactile sensors, Laser proximity scanner and an electronic compass. The robot base also is equipped with two colour video cameras mounted on a pan tilt unit, enabling vision tasks. Inside the enclosure there are two high performance PCs equipped with WiFi and and on-board speech synthesiser.