Pioneer 2 - Manual (Page 10)

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What Is Pioneer?
Pioneer is a family of mobile robots, both two-wheel and four-wheel-drive. They are all small, intelligent
robots, whose architecture was originally developed by Kurt Konolige, Ph.D., of SRI International, Inc. and
Stanford University.
These are truly off-the-shelf, “plug and play” mobile robots, containing all of the basic components for
sensing and navigation in a real-world environment, including battery power, drive motors and wheels,
position / speed encoders, and integrated sensors and accessories. They are all managed via an onboard
microcontroller and mobile-robot server software.
Your Pioneer 2 also has a variety of expansion power and I/O ports for optional, custom attachments.
These include an addressable I/O bus for up to 16 devices, two RS-232 serial ports, eight digital I/O ports,
five A/D ports, PSU controllers and more — all accessible through a common application interface to the
robot server software, P2OS.
With the onboard computer option, Pioneer 2 has four additional RS-232 ports, a PCI bus and space for
PC104+ accessory cards. With Ethernet-ready onboard autonomy, the Pioneer becomes a plug-and-play
agent for multi-intelligence work.
Figure 2-1. The Basic Components of a Pioneer 2 DX
Client Software
Pioneer 2 comes with a variety of mobile robotics development software. Currently available Pioneer client
software for the computing platform of your choice (UNIX, Linux, Macintosh, Win32) includes:
•
The Saphira client development suite with Colbert
•
Ayllu subsumption-like system, with multi-agent extensions
•
Pioneer simulator
•
Pioneer LOGO (P-LOGO)
•
Pioneer Application Interface (PAI)
Versions and all updates for supported computing platforms are available to password-registered customers
for download from our software website (see Congratulations, Chapter 1):
http://robots.activmedia.com