A Hardware Design Philosophy for an Autonomous Robotic

Abstract: The paper outlines a design philosophy adopted for hardware enhancements to a mobile robotic system. These enhancements allow implementation and real world evaluation of current and future research into autonomous robotic control. The design philosophy is followed to minimise the need for modification and redesign of the hardware for future research applications. The key aspect of this design philosophy is to separate the custom electronic hardware from the control computer. This primarily allows little or no hardware modifications when the control computer is upgraded for future applications. All electronics hardware is controlled by a distributed network of microcontrollers which interface with the control computer via virtual COM ports over USB technology