TRACKS UNDERCARRIAGE AND WHEELS DESIGN

Robots with continuous tracks or wheels? Yes, we know it! Sometimes it can be very difficult to correctly choose between wheels and tracks when you build a robot because each locomotion system provides different performances and outputs. The most important topics and features to consider when you have to design a locomotion system are the traction, the driving system (hackermann or skid-steering?), the maximum ground pressure and the suspension system.

If you need a less ground pressure, it is necessary to choose the tracks since they are well suitable for soft surfaces. On the other side, wheels have a significant advantage in steering compared to tracks, and this can be translated into a good maneuverability for the wheels.

METAL WORKING, LASER-CUT AND MECHANICAL PROTOTYPES

Thanks to our mechanic’s and production’s workshop, our team can build and develop any kind of mechanic and mechatronics device in no time and at low prices and they will work from the product concept through packaging. Since we do not need to use any external resources, we are able to manufacture prototypes, frames and any other mechanical device quickly and efficiently. Our team has the resources for Finite Element Analysis (FEA) for stress/strain analysis to improve and verify the design.

We have the capability to drill and tap into hard and thick metal sheets, laser-cut, bend and solder them to build complex metal structures the highest accuracy and precision.

ELECTRONICS DESIGN AND PROTOTYPING

Do you need to build or to design a specific electronics board for your project? Do you already have your design and you need to build it? Just hire our team! Thanks to our highly skilled electronics engineers, we can design and build every kind of electronics circuit: from microelectronics to power systems, from embedded boards to remote transmitters. We can design circuits to control solenoids and motors with current sensing features and power control, communication interfaces based on Wi-Fi or Xbee, sensors boards and mechatronics systems.

MAPPING AND AUTONOMOUS NAVIGATION ALGORITHMS

Outdoor navigation and mapping in unstructured environments involves unpredictable effects like wheel slippage and requires a robust and efficient driving system able to detect and recognize different types of terrain so that the vehicle can decide between easily and not-so-easily traversable terrains and improve path planning while moving towards a new goal.
Our Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) algorithms are based on a very advanced Extended Kalman Filter and on multiple sensors integration; it includes an inertial sensor, a RTK GPS with double accuracy, wheel encoders and RGB-D sensors. Our software and code can be easily customized to be adjusted on your needs.

CONVERT YOUR TRACTOR INTO A ROBOT

The performances of agricultural autonomous vehicles have already been demonstrated in many farming activities. Tasks such as tilling, sowing, harvesting of grains, can be performed using autonomous robots or vehicles with high accuracy provided by global position systems like RTK GPS (currently about ±2 cm when using GNSS technology) and inertial sensors. Robots need to autonomously navigate their environment and perform actions at set locations, for example, picking a fruit, spraying a pesticide, planting a seed, imaging a plant, or making a measurement. With our systems and background, we can design a specific agricultural robot depending on your needs or you can just turn your current vehicles into autonomous platforms to improve all your farming such as seeding and irrigation.

DEFENSE ROBOTICS

Military and defense robots come in different shapes and sizes as per the task they are designated for: rescue units typically use tracked undercarriage since they need to move on all terrains, mining robots or vehicles usually use wheels and metal detectors devices to find mines and clear the fields, robots for ground support use large containers for heavy loads. Thanks to our large experience and background on undercarriage and locomotion systems constructions, we designed different types of robots for the military field. Just ask our team about your requirements and we will study the best solution for your application.

INDUSTRIAL APPLICATIONS

Material handling is an industrial application which can be widely covered by our mobile robotics solutions. Thanks to our navigation and mapping algorithms, our systems will help you to speed-up your loading and un-loading operations by saving both time and money. For indoor environments, we studied wheeled solutions able to follow specific paths and patterns by using a magnetic tape while for outdoor applications we designed suspensioned tracks systems and RTK GPS algorithms capable to drive the units over a specific path.

ROS APPLICATIONS – ROBOT OPERATING SYSTEM

ROS is an open-source, meta-operating system for your robot. It provides the services you would expect from an operating system, including hardware abstraction, low-level device control, implementation of commonly-used functionality, message-passing between processes, and package management. It also provides tools and libraries for obtaining, building, writing, and running code across multiple computers. We use ROS on all our robotics platforms and for this reason we have a large knowledge about his structure and framework. If you need help with ROS and your research, just ask the support of our team! No matter what your requirements are, we can provide you support both for simulation applications with RVIZ and Gazebo and for ROS packages like robot_localization, rtabmap_ros and navigation.

Get a quote!

Do you need more information about our services?

Do you have a project and you want to develop it?
Do you need a specific mobile robotics base with tracks or wheels?
Are you looking for a particular electronics board to control motors or solenoids, for wireless communication or to develop a sensors network?

Let’s us know about your project and we will try to help you!