Servo - November 2008

Surveyor’s Travels

But just in case image processing isn’t your cup of tea, the Surveyor can also run autonomously using interpreted C programming. Programs are stored in Flash memory. There are special robot commands and the protocol is also available on the website. The robot-specific commands even include those for a “wander mode” and a “swarm mode.” There are entertaining videos on the website that demonstrate these. And, as you might have guessed, there is also sample code that can be acquired through the website, and — by extension — the community of SRV-1Q users that frequent it.

design to reality. The open source mentality seems to have been truly adopted by the folks at Surveyor, with all of the shared software, hacks, and enthusiasm for creating a better and more interesting product.

The Surveyor Labs website features a link to a video about the Google Lunar X Prize that talks about the new contest to send a robot to the moon tasked with photographing

the Lunar Lander. With all of the promise shown by the SRV-1Q and the impressive community that is growing around it, we wouldn’t be surprised to see a robot like it end up on the moon someday. SV

Special Thanks to

Zander Rose and Reason Bradley of Inertia Labs and Howard Gordon of Surveyor Labs.

Open Source Opening Doors

Perhaps the most exciting things about the SRV-1Q are the possibilities. In the space of this article, we have hardly even scratched the surface of this bot. It can run autonomously, it can archive the video it takes, you can even get a bunch of SRV-1Qs together to make a swarm. The bot can be expanded with more sensors, and it can even be given “stereo vision” with the addition of another camera. Hacks like stereo vision and other things that score highly on the cool factor scale are all shared on the Surveyor Labs website, and a Robot User Forum encourages hackers and hobbyists to share their latest projects.

All of the possibilities are made reachable because the bot is open source. Not only can tinkerers mess around with the source code, but schematics and other diagrams of the robot are also freely available. Users can even download a Solidworks 3D model of the SRV-1Q from the website so they can truly get an idea of how this robot has progressed from

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For more information, go to:

www.surveyor.com www.bpexplorer.com.au/ www.roborealm.com www.analog.com www.cyberbotics.com/ http://msdn.microsoft.com/ en-us/robotics/ default.aspx