Yes, you are desperately in need of a monster robotic ATV. Meet the Grizzly, Clearpath Robotics’ latest serious research platform. It’s big, it’s scary, and if you get in its way, it’ll crush you like a bug. Or, you know, like some puny little lesser unmanned ground robot. Check it out:
Looks beastly, right? Clearpath definitely wasn’t fooling around when they designed the Grizzly: it’s got four high-torque motors, huge 26″ tires, enough ground clearance to give a startled gopher ample headroom, and is perfectly happy to operate in environments where sneezes freeze solid. Need to haul 300kg of whatever you want? No problem, the Grizzly can handle that. Twice over. The robot can also provide your on-board systems with more power than you can shake a well-grounded stick at (48V at 400Ah, to be exact). Here are some detailed specs:
As you can see, it runs ROS, and includes high precision wheel encoders, onboard current and voltage sensors, IMU, GPS, and pretty much whatever else you could possibly want to slap on there. It comes with plenty of demos and tutorials as well, to get you up and running as fast as possible.
Clearpath is also well known for their Husky UGV, so we made sure to ask them what makes the Grizzly different (i.e. more awesome):
It’s a category defining Robotic Utility Vehicle. It has a hitch interface to connect with standard utility vehicle implements. Designed for heavy work for long periods of time in difficult terrains, it’s almost like a tractor with the precision of a robot.
For the record, this makes two major product releases in less than six months for Clearpath, the first being the Kingfisher M200. Not bad, guys. And we’re definitely looking forward to seeing lots of footage of Grizzlies beating up on other robots to start showing up on YouTube sometime soon.
Source: Spectrum, Clearpath Robotics