Khepera mobile robot

The Khepera is a small (5.5 cm) differential wheeled mobile robot that was developed at the LAMI laboratory of Professor Jean-Daniel Nicoud at EPFL (Lausanne, Switzerland) in the mid 1990s. It was developed by Edo. Franzi, Francesco Mondada, André Guignard and others.

Small, fast, and architectured around a Motorola 68331, it has served researchers for 10 years, widely used by over 500 universities worldwide.

Scientific impact
The Khepera was sold to a thousand research labs and featured on the cover of the 31 August 2000 issue of Nature. It appeared again in a 2003 article.

The Khepera helped in the emergence of evolutionary robotics.

Original version

 * Diameter: 55 mm
 * Height: 30 mm
 * Empty weight: 80 g
 * Speed: 0.02 to 1.0 m/s
 * Autonomy: 45 minutes moving
 * Motorola 68331 CPU @ 16 MHz
 * 256 KB RAM
 * 512 KB EEPROM
 * Running μKOS RTOS
 * 2 DC brushed servo motors with incremental encoders
 * 8 infrared proximity and ambient light sensors (SFH900)

2.0 Version

 * Motorola 68331 CPU @ 25 MHz
 * 512 KB RAM
 * 512 KB Flash
 * Improved batteries and sensors

Version 4

 * 800 MHz ARM Cortex-A8 Processor
 * Weight: 540g
 * 256 MB RAM
 * 512 MB plus additional 8GB for data
 * Battery: 7.4V Lithium Polymer, 3400mAh

Extensions
Several extension turrets exist for the Khepera, including:
 * Gripper
 * 1D or 2D camera, wire or wireless
 * Radio emitter/receiver, low and high speed
 * I/0