Known Problems and Limitations

Known problems/limitations with R1

Mechanical

• The caster wheels of the robot carry most of the mass, and motored wheels can sometimes slip increasing the odometry error.
• The tape around the wheels seems to degrade after 6-12 months and needs to be replaced.
• The robot motors are automatically disabled due to current safeties at speeds higher that 0.6m/s (Y on controller)
• Mounting the camera inside the head (behind the plastic) makes the pointcloud fuzzy

Software

• The motors controller expects a specific frequency of instructions. If the network is slow (>40ms?) then the robot starts oscillating.
• Due to the nature of the robots base, when the robot makes differential turns the weight shifts to the sides and we have increases wheel slippage. That makes amcl having to constantly compensate for big rotations due to odom error.

Known problems/limitations in simulation

• The robot slowly slips away from the floor which increases the odometry error due to simulation collisions