TurtleBot3 will be released in August 2017, and TurtleBot4 will be released in May 2022. After five years, the technology has developed a lot. It took us six years to build a new turtle robot, so TurtleBot4 must be better than TurtleBot3. What are their differences?

To answer this question, let's think about it with the idea of engineering projects. If you design a new robot, what will you consider? Since the release of TurtleBot3 in 2017, we have received feedback from users around the world. There are some affirmations for us and some suggestions for the product itself. I list them below.

First of all, we like expandable things. It's good to put new things on robots. It's basically a research-oriented educational robot.

Lidar is very important, just like computer vision is very good, but its lidar makes navigation more powerful.

Nav2 Killer APP: We spent a lot of effort, and thank you for your positive feedback on this software.

Community and ecology: The construction and community of ROS ecology is obvious to all, and the results are very good. We will continue to improve the construction of the community.

High quality partners: We will be very careful when choosing partners, which requires everyone to understand the ROS environment and our original intention of designing TurtleBot. We also conducted several rounds of screening on the selection of suppliers and agents of the fourth generation TurtleBot. At present, we use OAK camera, IROBOT chassis and Clearpath integration technology in Canada. At present, there are only six agents in the world, and only one in China: Wuhan Jingtian Electric Appliance Co., Ltd. www.jingtainrobots.com. We expect more high-quality partners to join us.

Of course, there are also many shortcomings:

For example, although DIY is interesting,

But it is difficult to carry out in class. It takes at least 2.5 hours to assemble a TurtleBot3.

Simulation was not given priority. wait

We may pay too much attention to the hardware. In fact, the simulation environment of the robot platform is very important. Many times, we need to verify our algorithm in the simulation environment and then run it on the real robot platform. We have done a lot of optimization and upgrading this time to build the simulation environment. And put it at the top of TurtleBot4 design.

Based on the third generation TurtleBot robot (TurtleBot3), we hope to do the following when designing TurtleBot4:

Especially for the power distribution system, what we do needs to be a little forward-looking, similar to USB-C, which I think is very important. Finally, the differences between TurtleBot3 and TurtleBot4 are as follows:

[Return to Turtlebotxi Series]

[Strong base stability]

After Turtlebot 3 was released in 2017, many users gave us feedback, saying, "What you sent me was spare parts. I asked students to spell it out for at least two and a half hours. Sometimes students accidentally connected the power cord of OPENCR, and the board burned. Is it possible to directly give me a stable base in the future?" So Turtlebot 4 returned to Turtlebot series, and the stability of the base was stronger.

[Solve the problem of battery power supply]

The user also mentioned that every winter and summer vacation, the robot is not charged, and it will break down when it is reused. It is similar to the battery of our car. After more than 2 months, the battery will break easily if it is over discharged. However, the battery is a consumable. If it breaks down, you can only buy it again. So Turtlebot 4 is equipped with an intelligent charging pile as standard (both versions are equipped with charging piles as standard) to solve the problem of battery power supply.

[Sensor upgrade]

Another user said that the performance of the camera on Turtlebot 3 is too poor. In many cases, the Intel D435 or ZED2 needs to be configured additionally. At this time, the computing power is not enough, and an additional TX2 needs to be configured, which is too troublesome. Is it possible to directly improve the camera performance. On Turtlebot 4, we used the OAK camera launched by OPENCV company, and the product is very good (we will compare the hardware and software of Turtlebot 3 and Turtlebot 4 in more detail later)

[Enhanced interaction performance]

When using Turtlebot3, we do not know the battery status/WIFI status/communication status/motor status, which we need to connect the display to understand. New generation Turtlebot 4 standard configuration UI interaction panel

[Power distribution system]

That is, the power distribution system, the body on the mobile robot platform, sensors, control boards, etc. need to be powered. The idea of this power distribution system is advanced, but we think it is necessary.

[Emphasis on simulation]

Turtlebot is a research-oriented educational robot in essence. We hope that users can create more robots based on this platform. Users purchase this platform not only for hardware, but also for an ecological environment for creating robots, so that engineers can have more space to dream. Therefore, simulation is very important. We put simulation at the top of TurtleBot4 design.

[Based on ROS2.0 system]

ROS2.0 can be inclusive compared with ROS1.0. That is, the code you write in the ROS environment on TurtleBot3 can be used on TurtleBot4. And you need to believe that the technology is constantly updated and iterated. Therefore, ROS2.0 will be better than ROS1.0 (you can pay attention to the differences between ROS1.0 and ROS2.0 in the future), and TurtleBot4 will be better than TurtleBot3.

TurtleBot4 purchase link: https://item.jd.com/10042270072525.html

TurtleBot3 purchase link: https://item.jd.com/10045953707871.html