Rebuilding Omni: Open Source Robot Autonomous Navigation Upgrade

I'd like to introduce you to my new robot Omni Omni is an open source robot that I've built to autonomously navigate

indoor environments Omni comes with a lidar sensor for mapping mesmerizing wheels for impromptu

pirouettes a 1080 camera for robot vlogging and an interchangeable plunger for all your Dalek cosplay needs X

to be honest with you this robot is definitely not rated for outdoor use so let's head back to the workshop and I'll

tell you more about how this robot was put together this video is sponsored by PCB way

I started working on Omni about a year ago in collaboration with EDM Studio a company focused on creating interactive

installations for museums together with the shared goal of creating an autonomous modular robotic platform for

exploring indoor environments this clip shows one of the early autonomous navigation tests the Green Arrow

represents a waypoint command knowing that it should avoid all nearby obstacles the robot immediately

calculates an optimized path to the set point and begins moving autonomously the Escape birth to Omni and today omni's

gonna die you see Omni has several fundamental issues that need resolving and I have a

wish list of extra features that I'd like to see included on the robot so today it's time to take the entire

toolbox and throw it at this robot until it's nothing but a pile of nuts bolts gears and wires

then I'll rebuild Omni from the ground up resolving some of its issues and checking items off my wish list but

before we start tearing things apart like a Jawa Scavenging for scrap parts let's have a quick look at the robot

while it still runs foreign these unique Wheels have free spinning

rollers that enable movement perpendicular to the wheel's axis of rotation by combining three wheels in a

triangular shape around the robot's circumference we can rotate on the spot and Vector in any direction

instantaneously as opposed to a car that needs to parallel park or do a three-point turn

even more interesting than Omni Wheels is this lidar scanner that sends out a laser beam to measure the distance to

nearby objects with this single spinning Cyclops like eyeball I can give the robot sight

and by connecting my Xbox controller we can start driving around as I drive around the building a map

begins to form as each subsequent lidar scan is stitched together this is achieved using a slam algorithm

or simultaneous location and mapping slam is a method for constructing a map while also tracking the robot's location

within the map to achieve this the robot collects data from an onboard inertial measurement unit wheel RPM from motor

encoders and fuses them together using an extended Kalman filter combined with feature mapping from the lidar scans we

can precisely place the location of the robot within the map But Here Comes the interesting part once I've created a map

of the building I can send coordinates to the robot it'll immediately generate a path to the goal and autonomously

navigate there avoiding all obstacles that previously mapped out as well as any new obstacles in the environment

like pesky carbon-based human life forms throughout the map you may see random black pixels littered in the hallways

where there should otherwise be none at all these pixels are created from the lidar detecting the threaded rods on the

robot frame obviously we don't actually want to detect these and register them as obstacles so in a future update I'll

add a minimum distance threshold for the lidar but how is all of this happening inside the robot underneath its wooden

shell is an apple pie and underneath the apple pie is a Raspberry Pi computer running Roz 2 or the Robot Operating

System rods 2 is an open source set of tools and libraries for developing robotic

applications the software I've created with the rods toolkit is structured as a network of nodes enabling communication

between the brain of the robot its Motors and its sensors including lidar camera motor encoders and an inertial

measurement unit alas none of the current sensors can detect stairs

the lidar scanner can only detect objects that are in its planar field of view toddlers cats and smaller robots

won't be seen by lighter and may be at risk of annihilation this is just one reason that today I'm

tearing Omni apart so that I can rebuild it from the ground up resolving some of these issues and incorporating new

features from my wish list I figured this is the perfect time to turn on the camera and bring you along for the

journey together over the course of multiple videos we can look at everything that goes into designing this

robot from the mechanical to electrical to software but this isn't just going to be a show and tell I want you to get

involved in the project and learn some stuff along the way that's why this robot is being released as an open

source project on GitHub at the moment there's just a few of the cad files for this robot but over the coming videos

I'll publish the software and electronics foreign

[Music] having Stripped Away the wooden shell and the top two sensor platforms were at

the belly of the Beast I could make a whole video on these Electronics one upgrade I've already started working on

is replacing the relay board with a professionally fabricated PCB from this video's sponsor PCB way PCB way provides

an amazing service for quickly manufacturing high quality and affordable custom pcbs I've fabricated

around a dozen different pcbs with them and every time the results have been phenomenal PCB way can help take your

projects from looking like this to looking like this if you're a beginner to this I already

have an entire tutorial series on how you can design your own pcbs so when you're ready head over to PCB way to

bring your circuits to life finally we're at the last stage of the robot the drivetrain the first order of

business in the next video is to improve these motor mounts mounting the wheel directly on the motor

axle and expecting it to support the weight of a metal robot has about as much structural Integrity as a boiled

spaghetti stick come back to the next video for the installation of this much sturdier

support but before you go here's a little reward for staying till the end of the video

all opponents of the robot laid out in a gnawling pattern I'm really struggling to justify the time it took to do this

[Music] if you'd like to follow along with this rebuild of omni be sure to click

subscribe and turn on notifications I'll see you in the next one [Music]

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