Kaua’i Labs is excited to announce it’s now a Studica Robotics Company, allowing Kaua’i Labs to better serve the needs of the Robotics Community.
With a focus on robotics and STEM since 1985, Studica is an innovative solution developer and supplier of future-focused technologies to Education and Industry.
Studica Robotics develops and manufactures a complete robotics Building System made up of mechanical structure, electronics, controllers, sensors, software, and training material that is used in education and in competitions around the world. The Studica Robotics Building System is modular and offers everything needed to build custom robots – ideal for the classroom, robotics teams, homeschoolers, hobbyists, and enthusiasts.
It is an enormous honor for us to partner with a worldwide organization that works with many partners to foster opportunities and connect societies with skills.
Announcing new Next-generation navX2-MXP and the recently-released navX2-Micro and VMX FRC Training Robot
The navX legacy continues…
2013: Kaua’i Labs releases nav6: 1st 6-axis IMU for FRC Teams
2015: Kaua’i Labs releases navX-MXP: 1st 9-axis IMU for FRC Teams. Onboard FRC World Champion Robots in 3 separate seasons.
Today: Kaua’i Labs continues leadership in FRC Navigation Technology, releasing “Generation 2” Industrial-strength navX2-MXP and paving the path for machine learning-based navigation sensing.
Kaua’i Labs announces the “Generation 2” Industrial-strength navX2-MXP for FIRST FRC Robotics – for only $99.
Significantly improved angular accuracy and stability, even during Extreme inertial events
Rapid (5-second) auto-calibrating Startup
Accurate real-time Velocity Vector Measurements
Improved Linear Displacement Measurements
“Drop-in Replacement” for “Classic” navX-MXP
Powered by blazing-fast Kalman Filter-based motion processing on a dedicated 180Mhz floating-point microcontroller, navX2-MXP raises the bar for IMU performance, is plug-n-play with the NI RoboRIO, and is engineered for ease of use by teams of all experience levels.
navX2-MXP’s new IMU features an Embedded Machine Learning Core, enabling development of future real-time Machine Learning-based inertial navigation Features.
Next-generation sensor for robotics including the FIRST Technology Challenge (FTC) and FRC.
navX2-Micro is a drop-in replacement for the “Classic” navX-Micro sensor, and features new IMU & Magnetometer sensors enabling increased accuracy.
navX2-Micro features an upgraded 180Mhz 32-bit floating-point microcontroller and an optimized startup time at 5 seconds versus 15 seconds. Angular accuracy is improved.
navX2 is powered by a new Kalman Filter-based Sensor Fusion algorithm running internally at a blazing fast 416Hz.
VMX FRC-Compatible Training Robot for the classroom
Kaua’i Labs has partnered with Studica Robotics to develop a smaller, sturdy, lightweight, and less expensive classroom robot than your typical FRC robot. This robot is powered by the Raspberry-pi based VMX-pi Robotics Controller developed by Kaua’i Labs, and uses the identical software development tools used in FRC for Java and C++ programming.
Schools can equip their labs with multiple FRC Trainers, benefiting from the great value and compact size. Students can even take the robot home with them!
This affordable solution is intended for:
FRC teams that want to learn and train on a smaller and more affordable robot Schools looking for a way to teach FRC robotics in the classroom – or remotely Schools that want to teach coding in the classroom through robotics
Kauai Labs is proud to support FIRST Robotics and recently donated 100 VMX-pi Robotics Controllers/Vision & Motion Co-processors to the 2018 FRC FIRSTChoice program (Round 2) – making them freely available to FRC teams.
We’re happy to say that all 100 VMX-pi units were ordered on the first day of Round 2!
For those of you who missed acquiring one of the free sensors, Kauai Labs has plenty in stock – please visit the VMX-pi product page for more details.
Kauai Labs, a FIRST FRC supplier, is providing several open source products to FIRST Robotics Challenge (FRC) teams competing in the 2017 “Steamworks” competition.
These include:
navX-MXP Robotics Navigation Sensor
navX-Micro Robotics Navigation Sensor
SF2 Sensor Fusion Framework
These open source sensors and software libraries and framework enable sophisticated navigation capabilities to student-built robots, providing open access to examples, source code, schematics and training materials – helping inspire them Build Better Robots®.
New for 2017. Integrate navX-MXP/Micro with robotic Vision Processing to increase accuracy.
Kauai Labs announces the release of the new Sensor Fusion Framework (SF2). SF2 is a free, open-source software framework making navX-MXP and navX-Micro even more powerful – fusing multiple sensors together to help you build even better robots. Available in LabVIEW, C++ and Java for the RoboRIO, the initial SF2 release enables Video Processing Latency Correction on FRC robots.
Kauai Labs is proud to support FIRST Robotics and recently donated 200 navX-Micro Robotics Navigation sensors to the 2017 FRC FIRSTChoice program – making them freely available to FRC teams.
We’re happy to say that all 200 navX-Micro sensors were ordered on the first day of Round 1!
For those of you not fortunate enough to acquire one of the free sensors, we have plenty in stock – please visit the navX-Micro product page for more details.
navX-MXP is very popular among FIRST Robotics Challenge (FRC) robotics teams, including the Runner-up FRC Alliance Captain Team (2056 – OP Robotics) at the 2016 FIRST World Championships in St. Louis, Missouri.
In order to make navX-MXP more easily available to Canadian teams at a lower cost, Kauai Labs is happy to announce that Studica will be distributing navX-MXP starting immediately.
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The “nav6” inertial measurement unit (IMU) was developed to provide sophisticated inertial navigation capabilities easily available to student robotics teams, including the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC).
This low-cost circuit board enables a 4-wheel omni-directional drive robot to be driven in “field-oriented” drive mode by accurately measuring the robots “pose” – the amount of tip, tilt and rotation – relative to the field. Additionally, the nav6 can be used to implement robot balancing algorithms.
The nav6 employs the Invensense MPU-6050 IC which includes a 3-axis accelerometer and a 3-axis gyroscope and an on-chip digital motion processor. The nav6 also includes a Honeywell HMC5883L 3-axis magnetometer.
The nav6 is also Arduino-compatible, and can be programmed by anyone via the free Arduino Integrated Development Environment (IDE).
Additionally, software to easily integrate the nav6 into the FIRST robotics control system is available.
Open-source schematics, nav6 firmware source code and cRio code to interface with the nav6 are available online.
Given the popularity of the Arduino among the “maker” community, a large body of software and literally 100s of “shields” which allow extension of the board’s basic functionality by adding different components have been developed.
Yet the Arduino’s underlying 8-bit processor running at 16Mhz, coupled with small amounts of FLASH memory and RAM often limits the projects that can be accomplished. This limitation has been mitigated to some degree by this year’s release of the Arduino Due, which moves the platform to a 32-bit processor running at 84 Mhz with 96Kbytes of RAM and 512Kbytes of FLASH.
However last year saw the release of a much more powerful solution at a cost similar to the Arduino Due: the Netduino Plus 2, which features the STM32 F4 microcontroller. The F4, running at 168Mhz, has twice the speed of the Due’s processor, has double the RAM at 192Kbytes and double the FLASH at 1024 Kbytes. And that’s not all – the Netduino Plus 2 32-bit ARM processor also provides a Floating Point Unit (FPU) and DSP instructions that enable advanced signal processing. And last but not least, the Netuino Plus 2 has an ethernet interface for connecting directly to the internet.
There was only one catch: Arduino developers used to the C-language and the Arduino API had to transition to use the .NET Micro Framework – a new language and a runtime. Moreover, the .NET Micro Framework consumes a significant portion of the onboard RAM/Flash on the Netduino Plus 2.
Seeing this condition, Kauai Labs decided to provide Arduino API and C/C++ language development on the Netduino Plus 2, and has developed the free, open-source software library named “libmaple-f405”. This work is based upon the Leaf Labs “maple” library.
