Driving a LIMO

With the proliferation of low-cost processing units and sensors, robotics is becoming much more accessible to the hobbyist than it was in the past. It can, however, be daunting for a neophyte to get started. Building a robot requires knowledge in many fields, including mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, and software engineering. A general purpose robotics platform that already implements many design details can be an excellent starting point to let learners jump right in without getting bogged down in all the fine details.

One such robotics platform has recently been launched on Kickstarter by AgileX Robotics. This open source LIMO platform is designed to be accessible to beginners, while also having something to offer as skills advance. It is especially well suited to tasks involving simultaneous localization and mapping, autonomous path planning and navigation, obstacle avoidance, and object detection.

At the heart of the four-wheeled, car-like LIMO is an NVIDIA Jetson Nano that provides 472 GFLOPs of processing power for AI workloads. The platform is also equipped with a 360° scanning LiDAR, Intel RealSense infrared camera, inertial measurement unit, and a touchscreen display. The voice module includes a microphone that allows LIMO to recognize voice commands, and a WiFi antenna allows for additional remote control options.

As you have likely noticed from the feature list, LIMO makes a great platform for autonomous vehicle development. With that in mind, the makers are including a simulation table along with the platform that allows designs to be tested in a city-like environment. It comes with marked streets, a traffic light, gentle slopes, and a lift gate to test your skills in designing autonomous vehicles.

Out of the box, LIMO supports four different steering modes: omni-wheel steering, tracked steering, four-wheel differential steering, and Ackermann steering. The process to switch between modes is quick, taking only three minutes. These various modes allow LIMO to operate in many indoor and outdoor use cases.

Although the platform is targeted primarily towards beginning roboticists, the price tag is not especially low. Outfitted as described above, the super early bird price is $999. A LIMO Lite version is also available at $399, but it ships without the camera, LiDAR, touchscreen, Jetson Nano, or IMU, so you would need to add in a significant amount of hardware on your own to make it useful.

If you are looking for a great way to get into robotics, and are not feeling too much sticker shock, head over to Kickstarter to support the campaign.