Pioneer 3

A robot with four wheels on it's red base, which holds a smaller blue base attached to a robotic arm which is gripping a segmented circle.
The Pioneer 3, with a camera, LIDAR, and manipulator. Photo: Adept MobileRobots

The Pioneer P3-DX is a robotic wheeled base designed for autonomous navigation. It's the world's most popular mobile research platform. Thousands of robots have been built on its back, literally.

Creator

Omron Adept

(Originally developed by MobileRobots, acquired by Omron Adept.)

Year
1995
Country
United States 🇺🇸
Categories
Features
Pioneer 3-DX driving around. Video: Adept MobileRobots

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Did you know?

The Pioneer can be enhanced with everything from manipulator arms to speech synthesis and voice recognition systems.

Three Pioneer 3 bases, each with four wheels, travel in a row through a snowy landscape.
Follow the leader. Photo: Adept MobileRobots

History

MobileRobots was founded by Jeanne Dietsch in 1995 in Amherst, N.H. Focusing on research robots and automation services, it grew from a small startup into a global supplier of robot platforms. Its most successful product was the Pioneer line of mobile robots. Designed as a versatile system that was ready for deployment, Pioneer robots became a popular mobile base, used in research and corporate labs worldwide, as well as in college courses in robotics and computer science. MobileRobots was sold in 2010 to Adept Technology, now owned by Omron.

Another configuration of the robot shows it with two wheels, red base, blue equipment, and a horizontal bar with cameras on top.
The Pioneer 3 accessorized. Photo: Adept MobileRobots

Specs

Overview

Equipped with a rugged chassis and mounting platform with a 17 kg (37.5 lb) capacity. Optional 7-DOF robotic arm and 2-DOF gripper.

Status

Ongoing

Year

1995

Website
Width
38 cm
Height
24 cm
Length
45 cm
Weight
9 kg
Speed
4.32 km/h
Sensors

Cameras, wheel encoders, sonar, laser range finder, IMU, gyroscope, compass, bumper array, GPS.

Actuators

Two or four motors

Degrees of Freedom (DoF)
2
Materials

Aluminum body, foam-filled rubber tires.

Compute

Optional embedded computer

Software

MobileRobots ARIA open source platform

Power

Rechargeable battery, up to 30 hours of operation

Cost
$4,195 to $30,000 (depending on configuration)