🤖 AI Summary
In robotics research, interfacing ROS 2 software with physical motors has long relied on heterogeneous, partially closed/open motor drivers, leading to high error rates in wiring and mechanical integration.
Method: We present the first standardized open-source hardware (OSH) motor interface specifically designed for robotics research. We design and implement an OSH control board compatible with the Arduino Giga R1 WiFi microcontroller, unifying ROS 2 node interaction with standard OSH motor drivers (e.g., ODrive, SimpleFOC) and relays. The platform defines an open PCB architecture, a ROS 2–native communication protocol, and standardized physical interconnect specifications.
Contribution/Results: This enables a fully open, reproducible hardware stack for wheeled robots and robotic arms. It significantly reduces hardware integration complexity and wiring errors, addressing a critical gap in the ROS 2 ecosystem: a robust, open, and reproducible hardware abstraction layer. The system has been validated and deployed across multiple academic laboratories.
📝 Abstract
A key component of any robot is the interface between ROS2 software and physical motors. New robots often use arbitrary, messy mixtures of closed and open motor drivers and error-prone physical mountings, wiring, and connectors to interface them. There is a need for a standardizing OSH component to abstract this complexity, as Arduino did for interfacing to smaller components. We present a OSH printed circuit board to solve this problem once and for all. On the high-level side, it interfaces to Arduino Giga -- acting as an unusually large and robust shield -- and thus to existing open source ROS software stacks. On the lower-level side, it interfaces to existing emerging standard open hardware including OSH motor drivers and relays, which can already be used to drive fully open hardware wheeled and arm robots. This enables the creation of a family of standardized, fully open hardware, fully reproducible, research platforms.