title: E-puck mobile robot
text: # E-puck mobile robot
  
  The e-puck is a small (7 cm) differential wheeled mobile robot. It was originally designed for micro-engineering education by Michael Bonani and Francesco Mondada at the ASL laboratory of Prof. Roland Siegwart at EPFL (Lausanne, Switzerland). The e-puck is open hardware and its onboard software is open-source, and is built and sold by several companies.
  
  ## Technical details
  
  * Diameter: 70 mm
  * Height: 50 mm
  * Weight: 200 g
  * Max speed: 13 cm/s
  * Autonomy: 2 hours moving
  * dsPIC 30 CPU @ 30 MHz (15 MIPS)
  * 8 KB RAM
  * 144 KB Flash
  * 2 step motors
  * 8 infrared proximity and light (TCRT1000)
  * color camera, 640x480
  * 8 LEDs in ring + one body LED + one front LED
  * 3D accelerometers
  * 3 microphones
  * 1 loudspeaker
  
  ## Extensions
  
  New modules can be stacked on top of the e-puck; the following extensions are available:
  
  * a turret that simulates 1D omnidirectional vision, to study optic flow,
  * ground sensors, for instance to follow a line,
  * color LED turret, for color-based communication,
  * Zigbee communication,
  * 2D omnidirectional vision,
  * magnetic wheels, for vertical climbing,
  * Pi-puck extension board, for interfacing with a Raspberry Pi single-board computer.
  
  ## Scientific use
  
  Since the e-puck is open hardware, its price is lower than competitors. This is leading to a rapid adoption by the scientific community in research despite the original educational orientation of the robot. The e-puck has been used in collective robotics , evolutionary robotics , and art-oriented robotics .
  
  