A Portable, 3D-Printing Enabled Multi-Vehicle Platform for Robotics Research and Education
This provides an accessible tool for robotics researchers and educators, though it is incremental as it builds on existing maker and 3D-printing approaches.
The authors introduced microMVP, an affordable, open-source multi-vehicle robot platform for robotics research and education, featuring six micro vehicles that can be assembled in under two hours from readily available components.
microMVP is an affordable, portable, and open source micro-scale mobile robot platform designed for robotics research and education. As a complete and unique multi-vehicle platform enabled by 3D printing and the maker culture, microMVP can be easily reproduced and requires little maintenance: a set of six micro vehicles, each measuring $8\times 5\times 6$ cubic centimeters and weighing under $100$ grams, and the accompanying tracking platform can be fully assembled in under two hours, all from readily available components. In this paper, we describe microMVP's hardware and software architecture, and the design thoughts that go into the making of the platform. The capabilities of microMVP APIs are then demonstrated with several single- and multi-robot path and motion planning algorithms. microMVP supports all common operation systems.