Hardware setup

Hardware equipment of DIAGO:

• • Segway RMP 100 mobile base

  • RoboTorso

  • Laptops

Segway base

It includes base motors and batteries.

To charge batteries of the mobile base, just plug the white power cord.

To switch the mobile base on, turn the green button on and then the yellow button to enable motors.

IMPORTANT NOTE: auto-balancing mode must always be disabled, because DIAGO has two castor wheels.

DO NOT TOUCH THE BLUE BUTTONS ON THE RIGHT, ONLY THE TOP-RIGHT ONE MUST BE ON.

RoboTorso

It contains sensors (2 laser range finders, 2 Kinect cameras), audio system (1 microphone and 2 speakers), a LiPo battery and battery charger, 1 sensor/device switch, 2 emergency buttons.

The switch must be ON to power sensors and device and OFF to charge the LiPo battery.

To charge the LiPo battery, follow this procedure:

• 1. make sure the sensor switch if off (light is off)

  2. plug the white power cord (the battery charger will turn on)

  3. On the battery charger:

     1. press and keep pressed 'Start' until the screen displays 'BATTERY CHECK'

     2. check that it displays 6SER on both sides

     3. press 'Enter' to confirm charging

     4. press '+' to see voltage of the cells

     5. press 'Stop' when you want to stop the charge

To turn the RoboTorso on/off, make sure the white power cord is unplugged, turn the sensor switch on/off to power/unpower sensors and speakers.

IMPORTANT NOTE: the LiPo battery of RoboTorso has no low battery protection system. If the voltage goes down too much, the battery will be permanently broken (it may even explode).

MAKE SURE TO NOT DISCHARGE THE BATTERY BELOW 3.6 V PER CELL.

Laptops and other computational units

DIAGO has 2 laptops: one for controlling the mobile base and the sensors, one for GUI and human-robot interaction, including speech recognition and synthesis.

Other computational units (such as Odroid/Banana/Raspberry boards) can be added to run drivers.

Device connections:

1. Configuration with only two laptops

Linux laptop: segway USB, Hokuyo UTM30 USB, Hokuyo URG04 USB, 2 x Kinect USB, Ethernet cable to ASUS laptop

Windows tablet: microphone USB, speakers Jack, USB-Ethernet converter to Linux laptop, USB BlueTooth connector for Speaky

2. Configuration with two laptops and SBC boards