PickleBot
An autonomous pickleball hitting partner using a 7-DoF Franka Emika robot arm and a mobile base. An OptiTrack MoCap array predicts the ball’s intercept point on a pre-defined strike plane, commands lateral movement of the base, and plans a joint-space arm trajectory that hits through the ball.
Course
CS225A: Experimental Robotics
Timeframe
3 weeks [Coterm Spring]
Skills
OpenSai, Optitrack, Redis, Python, Simulation
Robot Hardware:
TidyBot2 is a holonomic open-source mobile manipulator for robot learning developed by researchers at Stanford and Princeton. The mobile base uses powered casters that can be controlled via teleoperation of a game controller or through redis commands. Redis is a server through which we can send position and orientation commands to both the base and the arm. The system features a swappable arm where various arms can be mounted onto the mobile base. Our specific configuration uses a 7-DoF Franka Emika arm.