The Ariadne Robot

(figure 3, left) is an industrial robot and is about 80 cm $\times$ 60 cm large and 90 cm high. The mobile platform can carry a payload of 200 kg at speeds of up to 0.8 m/s (about half the speed of a pedestrian). The right and left driving wheels are mounted on a suspension on the center line of the mobile platform. Passive castors on each corner of the chassis ensure stability. The core of the robot is a Pentium-III-800 MHz with 384 MB RAM and real-time Linux. One embedded PC-104 system is used to control the motor, internal display and numerical keyboard and radio link of the robot. The platform is rigged with two 2D safety laser scanners as bumper substitutes, one on the front and the other on the rear of the robot. Each laser scans a horizontal plane of 180$^\circ$ of the environment. The robot has a weight of 250 kg and operates for about 8 hours with one battery charge.

Figure 3: Left: The Ariadne robot platform. Right: KURT2. Both systems can be equipped with the the AIS 3D laser range finder.