T-Top

T-Top is a tabletop robot designed with advanced audio and vision sensors, deep learning perceptual processing and telecommunication capabilities to provide richer interaction modalities and develop higher cognitive abilities from interacting with people.

Authors

• Marc-Antoine Maheux (@mamaheux)
• Dominic Ltourneau (@doumdi)
• Philippe Warren (@philippewarren)
• Mariam Fdil (@MariamFdil)
• Franois Michaud, ing., Ph.D.

Contributors

• Ian-Mathieu Joly (@joli-1801)
• Charles Caya (@chcaya)
• Alexandre Filion (@alexfilion)

Licensing

• Source code files: GPLv3
• Other files: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Public License

Features

| Category | Type | Description | | ---------------- | ----------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Power | Power Adapter | 19 V | | | Battery | 1x RRC2054-2 | | | Battery Charger | 1x RRC-PMM240 | | Sensors | Microphone Array | 16x xSoundsMicrophones, 1x 16SoundsUSB | | | RGB-D Camera | 1x Intel RealSense D435i | | | Wide Angle Camera | 1x Arducam AR0230 | | | Touchscreen | 1x 7 inch 1024x600 capacitive touchscreen | | | Current/Voltage | INA220 | | | Light Sensors | 4x Adafruit ALS-PT19 | | | Buttons | 4x buttons | | Actuators | Stewart Platform | Displacement range: 3 cm (x, y and z), 20 (x and y), 30 (z). Motor: Dynamixel XL430-W250 | | | | Rotating Base | Displacement range: illimited. Motor: Dynamixel XL430-W250 | | | Speakers | 4x Dayton Audio DMA45-8, 2x MAX9744 | | | Cooling | 2x Noctua NF-A4x20 5V | | | Touchscreen | 1x 7 inch 1024x600 capacitive touchscreen | | | LED | Battery status, volume level, led strip | | Network | WiFi | Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 8265 NGW | | | Ethernet | 100 Mbps | | Processing | Computer | NVIDIA Jetson AGX Xavier Developer Kit or NVIDIA Jetson AGX Xavier Orin Developer Kit | | | Motor MCU | Teensy 4.0 | | | Battery MCU | Teensy LC | | Perceptions | | SLAM, object detection, person pose estimation, face recognition, sound classification, speaker identification, robot name detection, speech to text, person identification, music beat detection, source source localization, ego noise reduction, vad | | Behaviors | | Telepresence, emotions, talking, greeting, face following, dancing, exploring, sound following |

Repository Structure

• The documentation folder contains the documentation to build and configure T-Top.
• The CAD folder contains the SolidWorks files of the robot. Il also contains the DXF and STL files to cut and print custom parts.
• The firmwares folder contains the firmware for the MCUs.
• The PCB folder contains the KiCad files of the custom PCBs. Il also contains the Gerber files to manufacture the PCBs.
• The ros folder contains the ROS packages to use the robot.
• The tools folder contains the tools to develop and use the robot.

Development Computer Setup

See 01COMPUTERCONFIGURATION.md

Papers

• M.-A. Maheux, D. Ltourneau, P. Warren, A. M. Panchea, J. M. Robillard and F. Michaud, Designing a Tabletop SAR as an Advanced HRI Experimentation Platform, in Proceedings of the 2024 International Symposium on Technological Advances in Human-Robot Interaction (TAHRI 2024), Boulder, CO, USA, 2024
  • YouTube Video
• M. Fdil, M. Levasseur, D. Ltourneau, M.-A. Maheux, M. Lussier-Therrien, F. Michaud, "Enhancing Open Conversations Using Visual Percepts From a Socially Assistive Robot -- Preliminary Assessment", in Proceedings of the International Conference on Social Robotics, 2024, pp. 1-12.
  • YouTube Video
    
• A. M. Panchea, M.-A. Maheux, P. Warren, D. Ltourneau and F. Michaud, Exploratory Evaluation of a Tabletop Robot With Older Adults, in Proceedings of the 2024 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, Boulder, CO, USA, 2024, pp. 817821.
• M.-A. Maheux, A. M. Panchea, P. Warren, D. Ltourneau and F. Michaud, T-Top, an Open Source Tabletop Robot with Advanced Onboard Audio, Vision and Deep Learning Capabilities, in Proceedings of the 2023 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Detroit, MI, USA, 2023, pp. 7862-7869.
• M.-A. Maheux, C. Caya, D. Ltourneau and F. Michaud, T-Top, a sar experimental platform, in Proceedings of the 2022 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, 2022, pp. 904908.

Sponsor

IntRoLab - Intelligent / Interactive / Integrated / Interdisciplinary Robot Lab