MobileRobots Pioneer P3DX

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Mobile Robots | SICK

Robotics Common: SICK Laser Range Finder

Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio

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MobileRobots Pioneer P3DX

The Pioneer 3DX (P3DX) from Mobile Robots is an advanced research robot that can has an on-board PC, a range of sensors (including an optional laser range finder), and communicates via WiFi (Wireless Ethernet).

Services for the P3DX are included for both hardware and simulation.

NOTE: The Pioneer 3DX has been phased out in the final version of RDS 4. If you still require the services for this robot, please obtain them from CodePlex and compile them yourself.

To use the P3DX you need to be able to connect to the robot. Follow the instructions in the documentation that came with the robot for this.

Note that, unlike the other supported robots, the P3DX runs RDS on-board the robot. Because RDS operates in a distributed environment, you can communicate with the RDS services on the robot using the WiFi connection.

First ensure that the P3DX robot has the correct prerequisites for running Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio (RDS) installed directly on the robot. To verify that the P3DX robot can run RDS, you need to install RDS as explained in the next section.

Use DSS Deploy Tool (DssDeploy.exe) to create a self-extracting deploy package with all the necessary files required to run the Explorer service. This service is described in Robotics Tutorial 5 (C#) - Using Advanced Services. To create and deploy the package follow these steps:

Execute the following command from an DSS command prompt:

dssdeploy /p /m:"samples\config\explorer.manifest.xml" ExplorerDeployment.exe

Copy the generated deploy package file (ExplorerDeployment.exe) to the robot or mount a drive letter on your development PC to map to a drive on the robot.

Unpack the deploy package on the robot using the following command from a regular DOS command prompt on the robot:

dssdeploy /u /t:"C:\MRDS" ExplorerDeployment.exe

This will unpack the files neccessary to run the services on the robot into the C:\MRDS directory.

Run the Explorer service on the P3DX robot. To do so, open a DOS command prompt on the robot, navigate to the directory you created earlier, and start the DSS runtime as follows:

cd /d C:\MRDS
dsshost /p:50000 /t:50001 /m:"samples\config\explorer.manifest.xml"

The SICK Laser Range Finder normally takes a while to start up but after a minute or two you should see the robot start to navigate autonomously around the floor.

Mobile Robots | SICK

Robotics Common: SICK Laser Range Finder

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