We present Scratchy-a modular, lightweight robot built for low budget competition attendances. Its base is mainly built with standard 4040 aluminium profiles and the robot is driven by four mecanum wheels on brushless DC motors. In combination with a laser range finder we use estimated odometry - which is calculated by encoders - for creating maps using a particle filter. A RGB-D camera is utilized for object detection and pose estimation. Additionally, there is the option to use a 6-DOF arm to grip objects from an estimated pose or generally for manipulation tasks. The robot can be assembled in less than one hour and fits into two pieces of hand luggage or one bigger suitcase. Therefore, it provides a huge advantage for student teams that participate in robot competitions like the European Robotics League or RoboCup. Thus, this keeps the funding required for participation, which is often a big hurdle for student teams to overcome, low. The software and additional hardware descriptions are available under: https: github.com homer-robotics scratchy.
In this paper the development of a low cost robotic vehicle for research and education is presented. The vehicle was designed considering minimum cost and maximum capabilities. As a base for testing devices and different type of sensors, a commercially available vehicle was used and modified. Two different version of the prototype vehicle were developed accompanied by the proper software that allows the end user to operate the vehicles as an educational or research platform. The functionality of the vehicles was verified after extensive experimentation.