Khepera IV

Note: In the Khepera IV generation, the advanced features formerly provided by the KoreBot accessory are included by default in the base Khepera IV robot.

The Khepera IV is the newest and most technologically-advanced Khepera mobile robot yet, benefiting from over a decade of experience and design refinements embedding state of the art technologies in a small form factor. The Khepera IV is the perfect platform for indoor research with a single robot or in a swarm in a limited space such as on lab floors or table tops. Highly modular, it accepts various options to adapt the robot to your application.

The Khepera IV comes with many features in a compact size, including many sensors (infrared arrays for obstacle detection and fall avoidance and an array of ultrasonic sensors for long-range object detection), a color camera, an accelerometer, a gyroscope, WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity, and a powerful open source system running on Linux, all in a robot only 140mm in diameter. Its architecture provides exceptional modularity, enabling the use of a wide variety of extensions (including laser rangefinders, the StarGazer indoor global positioning system, IO expansion boards, and more), and the extension bus specification is fully open and available to enable custom extension developments for users.

APPLICATION

The Khepera IV is the perfect solution for real world swarm robotics experiments on:

• Navigation
• Artificial Intelligence
• Multi-Agent Systems
• Control
• Collective Behavior
• Real-Time Programming
• Advanced Electronics Demonstration

Khepera IV Architecture

The Khepera IV architecture provides exceptional utility through its modular expansion system and familiar Linux core. The robot includes an array of 8 Infrared Sensors for obstacle detection with 4 more for fall avoidance or line following as well as 5 Ultrasonic Sensors for long range object detection. The robot’s motor blocks are using very high quality DC motors for high efficiency and accuracy. The internal battery provides a running time of about 5 hours. The robot is easily interfaced with any personal computer. With its Linux core, the Khepera IV embeds a complete standard Linux Operating System. It provides a well known standard C/C++ environment for application development. Almost any existing library can be easily ported to the Khepera IV, allowing the development of portable embedded algorithms and applications. Remote operation programs can be written with Matlab, LabView, or with any programming language supporting serial port communication.