Basic Usage

Warning

Make sure to be aware of the safety guidelines.

Charging

Connect the power adapter to Kobuki or dock Kobuki in the docking station. If Kobuki is turned on, you will hear a short sound when charging starts and the LED will light up appropriately.

LED Color Status
Green fully charged
Blinking Green charging
Orange low battery

Note

The battery still charges if Kobuki is off, but you will not see the LED, nor hear sounds

First Run

You want to see Kobuki in action without further ado? Kobuki has a special random walker mode embedded into the firmware which you can activate on start-up:

  1. Turn on Kobuki.
  2. Within the first 3 seconds press the B0 button and hold for 2 seconds.
  3. LED2 will start blinking and Kobuki wander around.

Note

This was introduced to the firmware in v1.1.0. In case your kobuki is not running this or a later version, please refer to the section about updating the firmware.

Software

In order to gain access to all of Kobuki’ s features, you will need an external computing unit (pc/laptop/tablet/embedded board) with software which communicates with Kobuki. Officially supported systems include:

Build Your Own Kobuki Driver Use the Serial Protocol

Linux C++ Application Use the Kobuki C++ Driver

Kobuki for ROS Use the Kobuki ROS World

Alternatively, you can get started with the Turtlebot 2 Platform which runs on a Kobuki base.

Note

Other platforms have had experimental support at one stage or another (windows/arduino/android).

Problems

Reach out on the following channels:

Note

Kobuki comes with a 1 year warranty. In case you bought Kobuki from another one of Yujin Robot’s distributors, please contact them, otherwise email Yujin Sales Support.