At LeaMech — an international team with members in the USA, Iran and other countries, working to launch a startup with funding from the US National Science Foundation (NSF) and planning its first branch in Turkey — we built a platform for mobile service robots: robots that carry loads and can follow a person over rough terrain, for camping, for bringing aid equipment to places such as forests that vehicles can't reach, or for moving objects in industry. The first goal was the platform itself, so the mechanics were kept at MVP level.
The first robot, Kach, was a four-wheeled mobile robot with stepper motors; its position control was implemented and it followed defined paths on command, with software based on ROS. The second, Karnak, was an omnidirectional robot with mecanum wheels and stepper motors that could move in any direction. A Raspberry Pi and an Arduino Mega were its brain, and paths such as circles and squares were tested through a mobile app I wrote for it. Karnak's body was rigid and industrial, and we imported the mecanum wheels from China because they weren't available in Iran. I also designed and built a simple concept auto-charging system for it, which passed its initial tests: the robot leaves the charging station, runs its mission, and returns on its own to dock with the charging contacts (see the video below).
I also worked on other LeaMech projects: Konum (Turkish for “position”), a positioning system for parked cars at US car dealerships that made finding and delivering cars faster; its follow-up, Kuş, which was to track car positions with a drone; and the Aktar & Nema digital twin project for industrial and physical environments, where I handled field implementation, camera calibration and the transformation between the camera and physical-space coordinate frames (the transformation matrices the code needed).
My role
Full mechanical design, build and commissioning of the robots, from design to fabrication follow-up; the mobile path-testing app; the concept auto-charging system; camera calibration and coordinate transforms in the digital twin project.
Key facts
| Kach | Four wheels, stepper motors, position control, ROS |
|---|---|
| Karnak | Omnidirectional, mecanum wheels, stepper motors, Raspberry Pi + Arduino Mega |
| Path testing | Mobile app: circles, squares and more |
| Auto-charging | Leaves the station, runs its mission, then returns and docks to charge on its own |
| Target use | Load-carrying, person-following service robot on rough terrain |
Kach and Karnak Mobile Robots (LeaMech)
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