Docking Demonstration Video

TAROS 2019 went well, the demonstration managed to run in an unstructured environment remarkably well, and the conference centre definitely had an unusual magnetic environment for the BNO 055 compass.

Communication in this demonstration works entirely using infrared signals, digital signals at a 38KHz modulation frequency are used to communicate information such as compass bearings between the port and the robot, while the analogue intensity level of a 5KHz beacon signal allows the robot to navigate when lining up within the port's cone of emitted light.

The second robot is also up and running now, and has performed a very similar docking demonstration during a modular robotics workshop here at York.

The final stages of assembling robot 2, just before attaching the faces for ports 1,2 and 3.

The next step will be to perform docking between two robots, rather than using the spare port as a docking target. This will also involve docking to a moving robot, as had been demonstrated in simulation, which will be very important to Dynamic Self-Repair operations. This should be performed in the next few months, however there are some other aspects of simulation work to complete before docking to a moving module can be started in hardware.