Projects Guide for ROBOTIS ENGINEER

This second volume keeps the purpose of the first: helping owners of ROBOTIS ENGINEER kits get more value from the included hardware and software. Its main theme is linking the kits to single board computers (SBCs), specifically the RPi4B and the Jetson Nano.

The book is organized as four chapters, numbered 4 through 7. Chapter 4 starts with the Commando robot, adding a pan-tilt platform for a Pi camera and connecting an RPi4B to the CM-550 controller. Its projects include dual control from a mobile device or PC, autonomous obstacle avoidance, using the RPi4B as a vision processor and remote controller, and using a PC as a data hub and supervisory controller through ZGB-SDK or Boost ASIO. It also covers controlling independent Dynamixel networks with the DXL-HAT and DXL-SDK.

Chapter 5 builds a Quadruped robot with four added XL430 servos and presents four variants that revisit the ideas from Chapter 4. Here the camera is fixed to the chassis, so the robot must change its body posture to aim it. These special movements are programmed with Motion Units and Joint Offsets through TASK/MOTION interfaces. Python and C++ control relies on DXL-SDK, with servos run in Time Control and standard Python or C++ arrays serving as Motion Arrays. The chapter ends with a PC acting as supervisory controller for two SBC-enhanced robots.

Chapter 6 introduces the SPI robot, which gets a pan-tilt mount to steer its camera. It explores ways to integrate either an RPi4B or a Jetson Nano, using projects similar to those in Chapters 4 and 5. Chapter 7 combines the earlier chapters into a MAX-E2 based biped with a pan-tilt and Pi Camera head assembly and an RPi4B mounted on its back, powered through separate cables for the CM-550 and RPi4B controllers. The added weight makes balance the central difficulty, which is addressed with static Motion Offsets and dynamically adjusted Joint Offsets on key servo joints.