Five years ago, DJI, a global leader in the development and manufacture of aerial imaging and civilian drone technologies for personal and professional use, came up with an initiative to promote robotics education. This is how the RoboMaster tournament was born, an annual competition open to universities and university students from around the world who are passionate about engineering and robotics. The competition consists of several categories, robotics, engineering and artificial intelligence (AI), and in its sixth year it has attracted almost 30,000 young engineers from more than 400 universities around the world.
Inspired by the robots created in recent years in the tournament, a commercial product such as Robomaster S1 was born from this initiative, presented last week in Frankfurt coinciding with its launch in Europe and defined by the company itself as the first educational robot ‘of land’. The S1 is designed to show not only the possibilities of robotics, but also how fun it can be. It includes powerful brushless motors, a chassis that can move in all directions, a high-precision stabilizer, and interactive programming, game and competition modes. The S1 offers loads of fun, whether it’s riding it according to the instructions or custom, driving it, programming with Python or Scratch, or racing with friends in various modes.
This is RoboMaster S1
The RoboMaster S1 is equipped with 31 sensors with which it can detect the world around it, including six on its smart bumpers. Above the chassis is a camera that offers a stabilized first-person view. It also features a specialized mechanical stabilizer and non-toxic infrared and gel ball launcher. The S1 is modular, supports more DJI accessories, and has six PWM control ports and one Sbus control port for advanced users to connect third-party hardware. The addition of Sbus ports allows the support of some third-party remotes in conjunction with a development board. The board, in turn, enables customers to add even more coding and custom parts to the S1 and use additional coding languages like C / C ++.
More features will arrive in November, such as Intercom, which also turns the RoboMaster S1 into an intercom by transmitting sound clips to the robot from its mobile app. This new feature will offer pre-recorded clips in the app and will support locally imported recordings of up to 30 seconds in length.
With FPV camera and computer vision technology, the S1 can automatically identify different objects, recognize and respond to sounds, as well as receive the signal from other S1 units. The central processor and CAN bus cable allow you to compute large amounts of data, maintaining a stable transmission signal and multitasking. Along with its custom brushless motor, the S1 has four Mecanum wheels like those frequently found on racing robots. Each has 12 rollers with which it can move in all directions and be precisely controlled.
The RoboMaster S1 is equipped with state-of-the-art computer vision technology and allows users to test for themselves real applications such as line recognition, visual markers (up to 44, including numbers, letters and special characters), people, gestures or other S1 .
Users looking for more advanced functions can program Scratch 3.0 or Python personal functions for their S1. With them they can determine the movements of the robot to optimize the torque of the four wheels. These personalized skills are the bridge from S1 programming learning to actual applications. Another new feature is music programming with Scratch. 36 musical notes have been added to the programming module, allowing users to write original music so that the S1 can play it.
Furthermore, using the advanced FPV camera and machine vision technology, the S1 can realize autonomous driving. By designing an online tour with duct tape, the S1 will follow the path and even record simulated traffic signs using vision markers.
The RoboMaster S1 is available in Europe at a price of 549 euros, and the new updates, Intercom, MasterBoard and Conquest, will be able to be downloaded together with the firmware update in November. In the next few days I will have the opportunity to build it from scratch with its 107+ parts and even more screws, and test it to see its capabilities. We will show the video in this blog as soon as we know how to control it.
