Fred II

Fred II is a robotics platform designed for experimentation and teaching.

This will be an evolving document on the design and implementation of Fred II. There are many options these days for building a semi-sophisticated robotics platform, at least something that doesn't use an 8-bit microcontroller with barely any memory, so what is used will probably change over time. The goal is to have a complete description detailed enough that someone else could easily duplicate the robot.

Control System

Fred II is a multi-processor platform using Linux as the operating system. Its current configuration includes a mini ITX for most of the computational heavy lifting and a Roboard, a Single Board Computer with lots of robotically useful I/O that runs Linux.

The miniITX uses Compact Flash to store its operating system and control programs.

Software

The main operating system for Fred II will be Linux. There is also use of ROS, the Robot Operating System.

Sensors

Fred II has stereo vision and makes use of the OpenCV vision libraries.

Effectors

Fred II has a working arm. The current implementation is a Crustcrawler AX-12 Smart Robotic Arm. 

Why Fred II?

Fred was my first, and rather unsuccessful robot platform, along with his compatriots Hewey, Dewey, and Louie. I want the name of Fred The Robot to live on, so viva Fred II.