Khepera mobile robot explained

The Khepera is a small (5.5 cm) differential wheeled mobile robot that was developed at the LAMI laboratory of Professor Jean-Daniel Nicoud at EPFL (Lausanne, Switzerland) in the mid 1990s. It was developed by Edo. Franzi, Francesco Mondada, André Guignard and others.

Small, fast, and architectured around a Motorola 68331, it has served researchers for 10 years, widely used by over 500 universities worldwide.

Scientific impact

The Khepera was sold to a thousand research labs and featured on the cover of the 31 August 2000 issue of Nature.^[1] It appeared again in a 2003 article.^[2]

The Khepera helped in the emergence of evolutionary robotics.

Technical details

Original version

• Diameter: 55 mm
• Height: 30 mm
• Empty weight: 80 g
• Speed: 0.02 to 1.0 m/s
• Autonomy: 45 minutes moving
• Motorola 68331 CPU @ 16 MHz
• 256 KB RAM
• 512 KB EEPROM
• Running μKOS RTOS
• 2 DC brushed servo motors with incremental encoders
• 8 infrared proximity and ambient light sensors (SFH900)

2.0 Version

• Motorola 68331 CPU @ 25 MHz
• 512 KB RAM
• 512 KB Flash
• Improved batteries and sensors

Version 4

• 800 MHz ARM Cortex-A8 Processor
• Weight: 540g
• 256 MB RAM
• 512 MB plus additional 8GB for data
• Battery: 7.4V Lithium Polymer, 3400mAh

Extensions

Several extension turrets exist for the Khepera, including:

• Gripper
• 1D or 2D camera, wire or wireless
• Radio emitter/receiver, low and high speed
• I/0

See also

Webots – software that simulates and allows cross-compilation and remote control of the Khepera and other robots

References

Notes

• Mondada, F., Franzi, E., Guignard, A. (1999), The Development of Khepera. In proceedings of First International Khepera Workshop, Paderborn, 10–11 December 1999. PDF BibTex EPFL Infoscience entry

External links

• Homepage – K-Team, the company which sells the Khepera robots

Notes and References

1. Web site: Volume 406 Issue 6799, 31 August 2000. 2021-07-14. nature.com. 31 August 2000 . en.
2. Verschure. Paul F. M. J.. Voegtlin. Thomas. Douglas. Rodney J.. October 2003. Environmentally mediated synergy between perception and behaviour in mobile robots. Nature. en. 425. 6958. 620–624. 10.1038/nature02024. 14534588. 2003Natur.425..620V. 4418697. 1476-4687.