Handle With Linux

This is the ranger SRV robot ('Satcam Robotic Vehicle')

It's a rugged robot based on the surveyor open source robot. It can be remote controlled over the internet or programmed for autonomous missions.

The surveyor as pictured here:

Is a nice piece of work in itself, supporting several control modes, the little unit can crawl around at around one foot per second. Its wireless receiver streams video to the web, and you can control and monitor the bot with any major operating system or via a web browser. If you don't feel like taking manual control of the surveyor, it can do fine by himself driving around, navigating obstacles, and even communicating with others of his kind via IR.

Recently swarm mode was added to the surveyor, where multiple robots are controlled by a single base station on a common radio channel using "swarm mode" commands.

Surveyor's SRV-1 internet-controlled robot employs the SRV-1 Blackfin Camera Board with 1000MIPS 500MHz Analog Devices Blackfin BF537 processor, a digital video camera with resolution from 160x128 to 1280x1024 pixels, laser pointer or optional ultrasonic ranging, and WLAN 802.11b/g networking on a quad-motor tracked mobile robotic base.

Looks like a cool toy, doesn't it? Now add a rugged aluminum housing, gps a camera inside the housing and heavier tracks and you get this:

This is the ranger by inertia labs a truly autonomous outdoor robot that can navigate by GPS, compass, and tilt sensors. It would be my dream toy if I could equip it with a tazer, to keep unwanted hands off it.

Software Features

* Open Source design with full access to source code (GPL) and schematics
* Robot is fully programmable for autonomous operation
* Extensive software support through 3rd party applications
* Teleoperate mode to drive robot around via console software or remotely via web browser
* Host software has built-in web server and video archiving
* Robot can run programs written in interpreted C and stored in onboard Flash
* Wireless remote control or viewing up to 100m indoors and 1000m outdoors (line of sight)
* Robot can be controlled from a terminal/console for easy testing
* Linux 2.6 support as well as "bare metal" programming with GNU bfin-elf-gcc

There's also a wheeled version available:

shown here with single camera, tilt, and two short range IR sensors looking down from the chassis