Vision-Based SLAM Robot Spider: An Undergraduate Project of Advanced Robotics of Bachelor of Technology

Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech) of robotics is a skill-oriented degree, and the students are usually not well-prepared both in theoretical knowledge and the opportunities to reach cutting-edge technologies. To overcome the above two difficulties, some challengeable projects are designed as the undergraduate projects of B.Tech of robotics. Among them, a SLAM robot spider is implemented. This project employed robotics vision, PID control, dynamics, kinematics, and additive manufacturing. Its structure is fabricated through additive manufacturing. The skeleton is composed of three main parts: six legs, torso, and head. Each leg has three joints which are driven by servo motors. The torso is used to mount the sensors, control modules, communication modules, and power source. The ‘NVIDIA Jetson Nano’ is used to control the motors, manage the communication interfaces, and process the sensing data. The ‘Intel RealSense depth camera’ and ’Intel RealSense tracking camera’ are used to futile the task of SLAM. The depth camera is used to acquire depth data to generate 3D point clouds. The tracking camera is an auxiliary reference to help to steer and to locate the position. Besides, an iPad tablet is used to provide a manual control option and render the scene in real-time.