The use of wheeled mobile robot Qbot

The summer semester took the introductory course in intelligent Mobile robotics and began to touch mobile robots. As an introductory course for the sophomore and junior students, the course work is not very difficult, but we have to finish the course work, and then after a few weeks, so that the summer vacation will be with Qbot in school for a period of time. What is this for? There is little information on Qbot on the Internet. No matter in Baidu, Bing or Google, to Qbot as the key words can not find any relevant information, even the official website no longer provide qbot support, because they have upgraded to Qbot 2 ╮ (╯-╰) ╭

But finally stumbled or made out, here to put some experience to write down, is a qbot of information to supplement it. Other schools are not clear, but my school to learn younger sister should still need this kind of things.

1, Qbot Introduction

Qbot Full name Quanser Qbot, is a similar to sweeping robot wheeled mobile robot, with two independent drive wheels, a universal follower, a directional follower, configured with five distance sensor, a camera, a pressure sensor. In addition, the Qbot also provides an interface for external sensors. Qbot probably long below this:

The control and programming of the Qbot is done primarily through Matlab simulink, and of course, the official will provide some of the Simulink modules that have already been written (need to install QUARC). Qbot comes with WiFi hotspot, PC communicates with Qbot by connecting Qbot WiFi hotspot.

2. Development environment Configuration

As mentioned above to control Qbot need to pass Matlab Simulink, but also rely on QUARC, so the configuration of the development environment is mainly installed QUARC and MATLAB. In addition, there is the configuration of the module.

1, the installation of MATLAB

The MATLAB version supported by Quarc is 2012~2014, so you need to install this version of MATLAB. Installation of MATLAB is a deep pit, but on the internet about the installation process of MATLAB has a better solution to the problem, if you encounter problems, direct Baidu is good. I installed MATLAB 2014a had encountered "can't find Vcredist.msi" problem, in this post 3L find a solution, if you also encounter this problem, you can refer to.

2, the installation of Quarc

The QUARC program version provided by the teacher is 2.4.878, on the official website I did not find the download page for the QUARC program. The following is a brief description of the installation of Quarc 2.4.878 as an example:

1. Installing a version of Visual Studio 2010~2012, Microsoft conscience, Visual Studio installation is very hassle, not to mention here, it is worth noting that Quarc 2.4.878 is not supported by Visual Studio 2013 ; (Install vs because quarc is dependent on VS)
2. Double-click the Install_quarc installation, will pop up a compatibility checking window prompts whether to pass the software check, if not pass the check, you want to go back to see whether MATLAB or Visual Studio installation is unsuccessful;
3. Select License for authentication, license file suffix lic;

3, the configuration of Simulink module

OK, after installing the above three software, you can start connecting Qbot. Click on the network connection to see if there is a network called Gsah in the wireless network, if there is a direct connection, if not, you need to manually add the network. Measured Win7, win8 are able to search the network, win8.1 is unable to search. So if your operating system is win8.1, you need to manually add the Gsah Network (reference) as follows:

1. Open cmd, enter: Netsh wlan show networks, OK to have gsah this net

2. Open Network and Sharing Center/set up a new connection or network/manually connect to the wireless network/Network Name: Gsah, Security Type: No Authentication (open)/next/Off

3. Run in cmd: netsh wlan set profileparameter gsah CONNECTIONTYPE=IBSS

4. After each run the program is in cmd only: netsh wlan connect gsah

5. Disconnect: netsh wlan disconnect

6. To clear the above settings: Netsh wlan delete profile Gsah

Then open the Network Sharing Center to modify the IP address, such as:

IP address range is: 182.168.1.10 ~ 182.168.1.19, if there are more than one computer connection, note that the IP address does not conflict.

After you save it, you might want to ping the Qbot to see if it's connected. Qbot's IP address is printed at the rear with a range of 182.168.1.20 ~ 182.168.1.254

After confirming that you are connected, you can open a Simulink module and start trying. For example, open the EXP1_CAL_D.MDL in the Expriment1 folder, such as.

Click the Quarc menu, select Options, or click Simulation, select Model Configration Parameters, open the configuration window, such as.

Code genetation in System target file by clicking Browse ... Select Quarc_linux_verdex.tlc,interface mex-file arguments fill in as '-w-d/tmp-uri%u ', ' tcpip://182.168.1.63:17001 ', Note the IP address should be changed to the address of the corresponding Qbot. Then you can start Bulid, then connect Qbot and start your robot journey!

Some errors may be reported in the bulid process, if you use a variable (that is, the letter) in your Simulink module, you must define it in the MATLAB command line and assign a value to the variable before bulid, otherwise you will get an error; In addition, interface Mex-file Arguments error in the command format, note that all punctuation in the command is half-width, and there are no spaces and tabs, if you do not find out, you can directly copy the above command to modify the IP address after use. Connection process will also error, the general reason is interface mex-file arguments in the IP address filling error or Qbot not run the corresponding program, only need to examine the command again, or re-bulid, if still unable to connect, you can try restarting Qbot, Reconnect the Gsah and connect again after pinging.

If a visual-related module is used in a simulink module, some other errors may also be reported.

(write to this first, tomorrow more, anyway no one see ╮ (╯-╰) ╭)

Iii. introduction of common modules

The use of wheeled mobile robot Qbot