Sagar Kasar's Blog on Technology Updates » Robotics

Amazing Open Source Robot PR2 by Willow Garage

Sagar Kasar — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 14:36:14 +0000

Yet another big Milestone was added to Open Source industry (and Robotics industry too!) when Willow Garage brought their amazing Open Source Robot PR2 in to the market. Willow Garage is a robotics research lab and technology incubator. Willow Garage develops hardware and open source software for personal robotics applications. It is founded by Scott Hassan in late 2006 to accelerate the development of non-military robotics and advance open source robotics software. Named as an homage to the garages that spawned the computer industry, he envisioned an innovative research lab infused with the engineering expertise of a product development company.

Willow Garage’s robot is called PR2. It is a two-armed wheeled robot of size similar to a human. Willow Garage plan to release it to the public to be used for academic and industrial robotics research. Willow Garage is maintaining ROS (Robot Operating System) and the OpenCV computer vision library. Both projects use the BSD license, an open source software license.

On May 26, 2010, Willow Garage held a graduation party in which the 11 PR2 robot’s were introduced. Some PR2s even "danced" with humans while being led by their grippers.

The PR2 has two 7-DOF arms with a payload of 1.8 Kg. Sensors include 5 megapixel camera, a tilting laser range finder, and an inertial measurement unit. The "texture projector" projects a pattern on the environment to create 3D information for capture by the cameras. The head mounted laser scanner measures distance by time-of-flight. Two computers in the base 8-core servers with 24 Gigabytes of RAM for a total of 48 GB. The battery system consists of 16 laptop batteries.

The Willow Garage and PR2 can be reached via http://www.willowgarage.com/

Check nice videos below of PR2 robot dancing

What if Robots start blogging

Sagar Kasar — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 13:47:00 +0000

I was just wondering if Robots start blogging what would be their topic of choice? and yes what about thier rank in popular search engines? will they grab attention from netizens? what your opinion?

Modbus Protocol for Industrial Automation Quick facts

Sagar Kasar — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 01:35:00 +0000

Modbus is a serial communications protocol published by Modicon in 1979 for use with its programmable logic controllers (PLCs).
Modbus is not industry specific and is used across a wide range of industries.
Modbus is used in multiple master-slave applications to monitor and program devices; to communicate between intelligent devices and sensors and instruments; to monitor field devices using PCs and HMIs.
Although the main Modbus message structure is peer-to-peer, Modbus is able to function on both point-to-point and multidrop networks.

MODBUS is considered an application layer messaging protocol.
Modbus protocol defines a message structure, how the PC addresses and requests information from a Modbus device, how the device will respond and how errors are detected and reported.
On the OSI model, MODBUS is positioned at level 7.
Modbus is a data transfer protocol used mainly in the building and industrial automation industry.
Modbus is now an open standard, administered by the Modbus-IDA
Modbus typically utilizes RS-232 and RS-485 to physically connect to PLC’s, I/O, and other hardware
Modbus is designed to move raw data, regardless of form or function. This gives vendors enormous flexibility in development on their end, and greatly minimizes data format restrictions
Modbus is a master-slave technology. This means that only one device on the network can act as master, while the others act as slaves.
Unlike the Standards RS232, RS422 and RS485, Modbus is a protocol that doesn’t insist on voltage levels, connection pins, etc. Modbus devices can use a variety of cables or networks, including RS485 or RS232.
Modbus has two modes: ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) and RTU (Remote Terminal Unit).
Modbus can be used over TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol).
Modbus is a free and open standard, it lowers the cost of development and implementation on all ends.
Modbus is limited to 247 connections per master unit/system. The exception is when TCP/IP mode is used because it makes the ratio between master and device virtually unlimited.
Modbus Protocol Organization can be reached via http://www.modbus.org/

Please let me know if you know any other quick fact that can be added to facts list of Modbus.

URL: http://www.sagarkasar.com/blog/2009/12/16/modbus-protocol-for-industrial-automation-quick-facts/