Specifications and Controls
RADIO
and
AUX
are pushbutton switches which engage or disengage power to the
respective devices
on the Motor/Power Interface board. See
Appendix B
for power
connections. Respective red LEDs are lit when power is ON.
The red
RESET
pushbutton acts to unconditionally reset the H8S microcontroller, disabling
any active connections or microcontroller-attached devices, including the robot’s
motors.
The white
MOTORS
pushbutton’s actions depend on the state of the microcontroller.
When connected with a client, push it to manually enable and disable the motors, as its
label implies. When not connected, press the pushbutton once to enable joydrive
mode, and again to enable the motors self-test.
To engage AROS maintenance mode, you press and hold the white
MOTORS
button,
press and release the red
RESET
button, then release MOTORS. In the future, the white
MOTORS
button may engage other modes, such as when in AROS standalone mode.
I
NTEGRATED
PC
Figure 12. Performance
PeopleBot’s computer and A/V
control panel
The Performance PeopleBot comes standard with an
onboard, internally integrated PC to act as the client
platform in the robot’s client-server architecture.
Mounted just behind the nose of the robot, the PC is a
common EBX form-factor whose motherboard comes
with four serial ports, 10/100Base-T Ethernet, monitor,
keyboard, and mouse ports, two USB ports, and
support for floppy, as well as IDE hard-disk drives.
For additional functionality, the onboard PC supports
PC104 and PC104-plus (PCI) expansion cards on a
card stack. Your Performance PeopleBot comes with
a full complement of three cards for sound, video
framegrabbing, and a PCMCIA adaptor with wireless
Ethernet. See following sections in this chapter for
accessory details.
Necessary power comes from a dedicated 12:5
DC:DC converter mounted nearby. A hard-disk drive
containing either RedHat® Linux or Microsoft
Windows® and a collection of robot and human-robot
interaction software is specially shock-mounted to the
robot’s nose, in between a cooling fan and PC system
speaker.
The onboard PC communicates with the H8S microcontroller through its HOST serial port
and the dedicated serial port
COM1
under Windows or
/dev/ttyS0
on Linux systems.
Automatic systems on the microcontroller switch in that HOST-to-PC connection when
PC-based client software opens the serial port. Otherwise, the PC doesn’t interfere with
externally connected clients through the shared
SERIAL
port on the User Control Panel.
Note also that some signals on the H8S microcontroller’s HOST serial port as connected
with the onboard PC or other accessory can be used for automated PC shutdown or
other utilities: Pin 4 (DSR) normally is RS232 high when the controller operates normally;
otherwise it is low when reset or in maintenance mode. Similarly, pin 9 (RI) normally is low
18
7
Radio modem or other accessory connected to its power port, not radio Ethernet.
8
Not the same speaker or sounds as the stereo sound that comes from the speakers near the top of the robot.