What is Pioneer?
Chapter 2 What Is Pioneer?
Figure 2. ActivMedia Robots
PIONEER REFERENCE PLATFORM
Pioneer is a family of mobile robots, both two-wheel and four-wheel drive, including the Pioneer 1 and Pioneer AT, Pioneer 2™ -DX, -DXe, -DXf, -CE, -AT, the Pioneer 2™-DX8/Dx8 Plus and -AT8/AT8 Plus, and the newest Pioneer 3-DX and - AT mobile robots. These small, research and development platforms share a common architecture and foundation software with all other ActivMedia robots including AmigoBot™, People- Bot™ V1, Performance PeopleBot™, and PowerBot™ mobile robots. All employ a common client-server robotics control architecture.
ActivMedia robots set the standards for intelligent mobile platforms by containing all of the basic components for sensing and navigation in a real-world environment. They have become reference platforms in a wide variety of research projects, including several US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) funded studies.
Every ActivMedia robot comes complete with a sturdy aluminum body, balanced drive system (two-wheel differential with caster or four-wheel skid-steer), reversible DC motors, motor-control and drive electronics, high-resolution motion encoders, and long-life, hot- swappable battery power, all managed by an onboard microcontroller and mobile- robot server software.
Besides the open-systems ActivMedia Robotics Operating System (AROS) software onboard the robot controller, every ActivMedia robot also comes with a host of advanced robot-control client software applications and applications-development environments. Software development includes our own foundation ActivMedia Robotics Interface for Applications (ARIA), released under the GNU Public License, and complete with fully documented C++, Java, and Python libraries and source code. SRI International’s Saphira robotics development system with simulator and GUI, as well as support for advanced localization and gradient-based navigation comes bundled, too. Several third-party robotics applications development environments also have emerged from the research community for ActivMedia robots, including Ayllu from Brandeis University, Pyro from Bryn Mawr and Swarthmore Colleges, Player from the University of Southern California, and Carmen from Carnegie-Mellon University.
Every ActivMedia robot also comes with a plethora of expansion options, including built- in hardware support for sonar and bump sensors and lift/gripper effectors, as well as serial-port and server software support for a number of sensors, effectors, and control accessories, like an onboard PC system, automated docking/recharging system, laser range-finder, 5-DOF arm, robotic pan-tilt cameras, and much, much more.
PIONEER FAMILY OF MICROCONTROLLERS AND OPERATING SYSTEM SOFTWARE
The original Pioneer 1 mobile robot had a microcontroller based on the Motorola 68HC11 microprocessor and powered by Pioneer Server Operating System (PSOS) software. The first generation of Pioneer 2 and PeopleBot robots use a Siemens C166-based microcontroller and Pioneer 2 Operating System (P2OS) software. Now, all new
