Introduction - Quanser qbot User Manual

Quanser Qbot: User Manual

1. Introduction

The Quanser Qbot (Figure 1) is an innovative autonomous ground robot system
incorporating a robust educational ground vehicle with the Quanser Controller Module
(QCM). The vehicle is comprised of a iRobot Create® robotic platform, an array of optional
infrared and sonar sensors, and a Logitech Quickcam Pro 9000 USB camera. The QCM is
an embedded system mounted on the vehicle, which uses the Gumstix computer [2] to run
QUARC, Quanser's real-time control software, and the Qbot data acquisition card (DAC).
Figure 1: The Quanser Qbot - top view
The interface to the QCM is MATLAB Simulink with QUARC. The Qbot is accessible
through three different block sets: the Roomba block set to drive the vehicle, the HIL block
set to read from sensors and/or write to servo outputs, and finally the OpenCV block set to
access the camera. The controllers are developed in Simulink with QUARC on the host
computer, and these models are downloaded and compiled into executables on the target
(Gumstix [2]) seamlessly. A diagram of this configuration is shown in Figure 2.
Document Number: 830  Revision: 7  Page: 1