NAPLES, ITALY — S4E Robotics is pleased to announce the launch of a Kickstarter campaign that will allow the public to meet RoboDriveWheel: the fully integrated wheel for mobile robots. RoboDriveWheel is a new fully integrated motorized wheel designed specifically for the development of a new generation of safe and versatile service mobile robots.
„We believe RoboDriveWheel can help all robotics designers but also enthusiast and hobbyist to create powerful and smart mobile robots with little effort and reducing cost and time“ says Andrea Fontanelli inventor of RoboDriveWheel. „This Kickstarter campaign, to rise 43359€, will help us optimize the production process, manufacture our units and finalize our packaging components“.
RoboDroveWheel integrates Inside a Continental rubber with strong adhesion a powerful brushless motor, a high-efficiency planetary gearbox and a control board implementing state-of-the-art algorithms for torque and velocity control. Robodrivewheel can also detect impacts and collisions thanks to the combined use of torque, acceleration and inclination measurement obtained from the sensors integrated into the control board.
„RoboDriveWheel is the ideal solution for anyone who wants to build a mobile robot with little effort but which integrates the most modern technologies.“ says Roberto Iorio CFO of S4E Robotics. RoboDriveWheel is being produced by S4E Robotics, a company that specialised in industrial automation and robotics. They have designed and produced mobile robots such as ENDRIU: The compact and modular mobile robot for sanitization. The process of designing mobile service robots is highly time-consuming. A service robotic drive wheel must be compact, have good traction friction, must be powerful but fast enough to move the robot at a speed comparable to human speed.
Moreover, a robotic wheel must include all the functionalities, sensors, and electronics. Finally, a service robot must work close to humans so the robot should be capable to identify efficiently the interaction with the environment. Usually, all these capabilities require different components: the wheel, the shaft, one or more bearings with the housing, a traction system (pulley and belt), a motor with a reducer and encoder an IMU and the electronics with several cables for all the sensors.
RoboDriveWheel integrates all these functions inside the wheel and it is easy to connect and control through the single cable for power supply and can-bus communication, a protocol used for years in the automotive sector.
To learn more about Kickstarter and supporting RoboDriveWheel’s 43359€ campaign, please visit
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/andreafontanelli/robodrivewheel
See RoboDriveWheel in action in our promoting video on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4SOgimqY6U