Within the RAM community, RELbots are common; they are used for robotic programming courses and experiments. Students can use these robots to test their software, learn to code robotics, and push the system to its limits. This means that the robots are handled by people with limited to no experience with robotic programming. This can inflict damage to the system by driving it against obstacles or from platforms.
This project will be a continuation of two previously performed studies. This regards the studies of M.J.A. Hofman, ”Development of a Collision-Avoidance Feature for the RELbot”, and I. Raoudi, ”ROS2-Xenomai4 Real-Time Framework on Raspberry Pi”. M.J.A. Hofman worked on time-of-flight sensors to prevent collision for the RELbot system. I. Raoudi worked on a standardised framework for the RELbot to operate on.
The goal of this study is to implement the ideas and recommendations of M.J.A. Hofman and I. Raoudi to achieve the following goal:
• Design a framework with a safety protocol to prevent unintentional damage to the RELbot system without limiting educational value.
This means a framework will be designed with a safety layer to prevent students from unintentionally damaging the system. This will not prevent the students from making mistakes, since this will limit the educational value of the system. The key is to find a balance between limiting damage and allowing mistakes.
The safety layer aims to provide this bridge, controlling passing data in real time, and raising errors when the system approaches its limits.
