PEDRO, a PatrolBot made by MobileRobots, is the newest member of our team. Equipped with a SICK laser scanner and several ultrasonic sensors it follows the classical SLAM paradigm of building maps on its own and localising itself based on saved maps. Mounted at the top of the robot we have a powerful PC to process data acquired from several cameras, for example an omnidirectional camera (PtGrey Ladybug2) or a stereo camera (consisting of two PtGrey Grasshopper, 2-megapixel cams).

That is "Robot withOut a Name". This robot is a very sturdy vehicle originally developed by Holger based upon ordinary PC hardware and an additional CAN-bus based sensor framework. RON features a pair of synchronized cameras for stereo vision, and an affordable upwards-facing wide-angle omnidirectional camera for Optical Rails. Sensors connected to the CAN bus are infrared and ultrasonic distance sensors, and gyroscopic and magnetic orientation probes.

The "Navigation with Optical Rails AutoNomous Robot" is a small and lightweight robot platform for purely omnidirectional vision-based navigation. It has been developed by David from the team around the Optical Rails navigation project and is equipped with an efficient differential drive and a cheap omnidirectional fisheye camera. Both are attached to a small industry PC platform which currently runs the same software framework as RON.

The orange robot is actually a simulated robot equipped with a wide-angle omnidirectional camera. The simulation takes place in Blender, yielding photo-realistic images of the robot's view inside a virtual office environment. We use that simulated robot for our view-based localization method.

FISH-I is a small-sized robot based upon the FischerTechnik ROBO Mobile Set. It is equipped with an omnidirectional camera and infrared sensors. In contrast to its "big brother" RON, this small robot has no control on its own, but it transmits sensor data over an RF link, which serves also to control its motions.

A number of standard FischerTechnik ROBO Mobile Set robots serve for the purpose of playing Robot Sumo. In this game, robots catch each other. The localization task is performed using a camera mounted to the ceiling which provides a bird's eye view of the playground. The control of the robot is very similar to that in FISH-I.

We use this robots for our courses on robotics; see our pages on teaching (Praktikum Robotik und Visuelle Sensorik).