ERIX

ERIX: (Empowered. Recon. Intelligent eXperiemental) Vehicle, is a complete prototype system from the ground up - almost literally from the first wire to the last line of code the whole thing is designed to take a giant leap away from typical 'enthusiast robotics'.

Why do I say a 'Giant Leap'? - It's simple, most hobbyist robots are controlled with a PIC (typically a BASIC stamp or some other < 40 MIPS [Million Instructions Per Second] device) as their core brain. They're capable of basic sensor functionality, such as following a line, or mapping a maze - sometimes even a full room if they're really clever and have enough storage, but these are a bit rarer then maze mappers. Almost none have cameras and of those that do, even fewer do anything with the information other then relay it via some radio link.

ERIX sets out to be different, at it's heart will be a 1.5Ghz Jetway Mini-ITX with 1Gb of RAM and it will have additional processing power from a 100MIPS (Million Instructions Per Second) 32 bit DSP for all its sensory and motor controller auxiliary work. It will have a Camera and it will be doing a lot with it, image processing is at the heart of this project. More on it's capabilities later on.

Unless hardware engineers step in at a later date the whole ERIX project is to be built by a software engineer and this poses some interesting challenges all of its own. Still this might serve as a long term benefit in terms of helping others follow a similar concept for a robotic machine.

The end financial cost of the robot is loosely estimated to be around the £450-500. As you read more about what the project aims to achieve at with what systems, it is hoped you'll appreciate where this cost is and truly why ERIX will be many steps ahead of your typical enthusiast robot.

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