Khepera
The Kheperea robots are quite good, and have been used for years by academic research departments and also for robot football competitions. They are pretty expensive though, and their very small size limits the types of addons that you can put on them (you would never be able to put stereo USB cameras onto one!).
There is also always a dilemma between deciding whether to have all the electronics onboard the robot or have it permanently tethered to a PC of some sort. Years ago when I first started to experiment with robots I wanted them to be completely self-contained units, but this approach can be expensive to construct and maintain. There are many types of embedded PC that you can buy now (you could even use old PDAs) but its all propietory technology and is usually expensive to replace if the robot bumps into something (as they often do). I found that once hard disks had failed of processors blown the parts were difficult to attain at reasonable cost.
For the Rodney robot I've gone for a device which is completely desk-bound and tethered to a desktop PC. Although this is limiting to some degree it does give the flexibility that when faster processors or better cameras become available it's all standard off-the-shelf PC technology and can be replaced easily at minimal cost. The ideal solution is probably to prototype the robot as a tethered device initially, then when the project is near completion put everything onto a small embedded PC board.
- Bob
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