Surveyor SRV-1 - Frequently Asked Questions

This document contains the most frequently asked questions (FAQs) on Surveyor's SRV-1 products.  If you don't find an answer to your question, consider searching the Surveyor Robotics Forum or Surveyor Robotics Journal


Questions ...


Q: What is "SRV" ?

A: "SRV" originally meant "Satcam Robotic Vehicle", since it provides WebcamSat's Satcam webcam client functionality in a remotely controlled robotic webcam. However, the functionality of the SRV now extends beyond just webcam capabilities, so "SRV" will likely come to abbreviate "Surveyor Robotic Vehicle", with "SRV-1" being the first in a series of robots.

Q: When will SRV-1 be available, and what does it cost ?

A: The SRV-1 has been shipping since June 2006 and is currently available. A starter kit, which includes one SRV-1 robot, one USB base station radio, and one battery charger, costs $375 (in the US), and additional SRV-1 robots can be purchased for $295 each (in the US). Educational discounts are available to qualified institutions. We also have resellers in the UK, Italy, Japan, Germany, India, Singapore and Brazil.

Q: What can the SRV-1 do ?

A: The SRV-1 has several modes of operation - teleoperated webcam, autonomous roamer, and server for other robot control software packages. As a teleoperated webcam, a user can send motion control commands from the base station console application or through a remote browser via the Internet, and view images as they continuously stream back from the controller, plus route those images to a web server for viewing by others. In autonomous roamer mode, the SRV-1 is given specific missions (e.g. identify and track an object, detect motion in a given area) which it performs on its own, reporting status back to the base station on a scheduled basis. There's now the ability to run interpreted BASIC or C programs directly on the robot, accessing all of the sensor and image processing functions. Information on running the SRV-1 under the control of other robot software is found below.

Q: How long will the SRV-1 run between battery charges ?

A: This depends somewhat on the level of radio power and the amount of power consumed by running motors, but the base level of consumption is in the vicinity of 200 milliamps without motor operation. The gearmotors consume about 75 milliamps each when running continuously. The robot has a 2 amp-hour Li-ion battery pack, so operation between charges should exceed 4-6 hours. Battery life 30-50% can be extended by changing the onboard LM7805 linear voltage regulator to a switching regulator such as the Datel 7805SR or Recom R-785.0-0.5 (either costs approx $10).

Q: Can I interface the SRV-1 controller to my own motors ?

A: Yes - the SRV-1 controller uses a Fairchild FAN8200 H-bridge for dual motor control. It's rated at up to 650 milliamps (1000mA peak) current. If you need to drive a larger motor, you can drive a larger controller from the SRV-1 motor outputs. There are additional outputs which can be used to drive hobby servos.

Q: Can I interface the SRV-1 controller to my own sensors ?

A: It's possible - you can find schematics and PCB layouts on http://www.surveyor.com/SRV_info.html. Check with us about the type of sensors.

Q: Can I run multiple SRV-1's simultaneously ?

A: Yes - Yes - there is now support for control of multiple robots on the same Zigbee radio channel using the communication protocol defined in http://www.surveyor.com/SRV_protocol.html. You'll need to run SRV-1 firmware versions dated 101206 or later to take advantage of this capability.

Q: Can I customize the SRV-1 software ?

A: Source code for the SRV-1 robot firmware is available to all customers under GPL. Our software is all written in C and ARM7TDMI assembly language, and is compiled using the GNUARM 3.4.3 gcc toolchain, which can be downloaded from http://www.surveyor.com/srvdownload/ . Also, the protocol has been defined for interfacing to the SRV-1 from other programs - see the SRV-1 command protocol definition.

Make certain to view the Surveyor Robotics Journal and the Surveyor Robotics Forum for information about new code releases as well as access to source code provided by other SRV-1 users.

Q: What WebcamSat functionality is provided with the SRV-1 ?

A: All of the functionality of WebcamSat, as described in http://www.surveyor.com/products/satcam/ is included with the base station console software - SRV1Console. The only notable limitation is that this is a single-camera version of WebcamSat that's dedicated to the SRV-1, so you can't add/remove cameras. However, all of the access control, feed fanout, and feed archiving features are supported.

Q: What additional software support is available for the SRV-1 ?

A: We have been working on a variety of projects to add support within other robotics programming environments for the SRV-1. These projects generally interface through our published SRV-1 control protocol and employ existing versions of SRV-1 firmware without modification.

  • Myro - http://wiki.roboteducation.org/Myro_Hardware - Myro is a new framework for programming robots. Myro is written in the language Python and designed for use in Introductory Computing courses, and has been developed by the Institute for Personal Robots in Education. The goal of the project is to provide a programming environment for easily exploring advanced topics in artificial intelligence and robotics without having to worry about the low-level details of the underlying hardware.

  • Webots - http://www.cyberbotics.com - SRV-1 support is now included in Webots mobile robotics simulation software. Webots provides a rapid prototyping environment for modelling, programming and simulating mobile robots under Windows, Mac OS/X and Linux. The 3D modeling and physics are outstanding.

  • RoboRealm - http://www.roborealm.com/help/Surveyor_SRV1.php - The SRV-1 can now be directly controlled from RoboRealm, a very popular Windows-based machine vision software package for robots. The RoboRealm extensions for SRV-1 allow creation of scripts that combine image processing on live video feeds from the robot, e.g. color filtering, blob detection/tracking, edge detection/outlining and feature extraction, with decision processing and robot motion control, making it easy to create behaviors such as object location and tracking, obstacle avoidance, motion detection, notification, etc, with a web interface, and control can be scripted from C/C++, Python, Java, C#, Lisp, Visual Basic, WScript and COM through the RoboRealm API.

  • Microsoft Robotics Studio - http://www.surveyor.com/MSRS.html - Drivers for the SRV-1 in Microsoft Robotics Studio are now available. MSRS is a Windows-based environment for academic, hobbyist and commercial developers to create robotics applications across a wide variety of hardware. Key features and benefits include: end-to-end robotics development platform, lightweight services-oriented runtime, and a scalable / extensible platform.

  • Transterpreter - http://www.transterpreter.org - The Transterpreter is a small (2000 lines of code), portable (strict ANSI C), open-source runtime for a growing family of massively concurrent programming languages. Capable of supporting thousands of threads on small devices, it is well suited for embedded and ubiquitous systems development. The Transterpreter can execute programs written in the occam-pi programming language, a language closely modeled on the CSP calculus. An example of Transterpreter programming for the SRV-1 was recently demonstrated at the 2007 AAAI Spring Symposium, as discussed in this article

  • URBI - http://www.urbiforge.com - URBI is a Universal Real-time Behavior Interface which provides a simple but powerful way to control any robot or complex system like a video game, using a convenient and easy to use scripting language that can be interfaced with several popular programming languages (C++, Java, Matlab,...) and OS (Windows, Mac OSX, Linux). URBI support for the SRV-1 is under development.

  • Player/Stage - http://playerstage.sourceforge.net - The Player Project creates Free Software (GPL) that enables research in robot and sensor systems. The Player robot server is probably the most widely used robot control interface in the world. Its simulation backends, Stage and Gazebo, are also very widely used. Player/Stage support for the SRV-1 is under development.
We post notices to the Surveyor Robotics Journal when release versions of any interface code become available.

Q: Is WiFi (802.11b/g) available for the SRV-1 ?

A: Yes - there is now an 802.11b/g WLAN expansion module for the SRV-1, based on the Lantronix WiPort.

Last Updated - 20 April 2007 20:15 gmt
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