Theodosis Ntegiannakis presented the paper with title Upgrading a Legacy Outdoors Robotic Vehicle at the 27th Conference on Robotics in Alpe-Adria-Danube Region RAAD 2018, on 6 June 2018.
Abstract
ATRV-mini was a popular, 2000’s commercially available, outdoors robot. The successful upgrade procedure of a decommissioned ATRV-mini is presented in this paper. Its robust chassis construction, skid steering ability, and optional wifi connectivity were the major rea- sons for its commercial success, mainly for educational and research pur- poses. However the advances in electronics, microcontrollers and software during the last decades were not followed by the robot’s manufacturer. As a result, the robot became obsolete and practically useless despite its good characteristics. The upgrade used up to date, off the shelf compo- nents and open source software tools. There was a major enhancement at robot’s processing power, energy consumption, weight and autonomy time. Experimental testing proved the upgraded robot’s operational in- tegrity and capability of undertaking educational, research and other typical robotic tasks.
