From both an educational and research point of view, experiments on hardware are a key aspect of robotics and control. In the last decade, many open-source hardware and software frameworks for wheeled robots have been presented, mainly in the form of unicycles and car-like robots, with the goal of making robotics accessible to a wider audience and to support control systems development. Unicycles are usually small and inexpensive, and therefore facilitate experiments in a larger fleet, but they are not suited for high-speed motion. Car-like robots are more agile, but they are usually larger and more expensive, thus requiring more resources in terms of space and money. In order to bridge this gap, we present Chronos, a new car-like 1/28th scale robot with customized open-source electronics, and CRS, an open-source software framework for control and robotics. The CRS software framework includes the implementation of various state-of-the-art algorithms for control, estimation, and multi-agent coordination. With this work, we aim to provide easier access to hardware and reduce the engineering time needed to start new educational and research projects.

翻译：从教育与研究双重视角而言，硬件实验是机器人与控制领域的关键环节。近十年来，面向轮式机器人的开源硬件与软件框架层出不穷，主要以独轮车和车式机器人的形式呈现，旨在降低机器人技术的准入门槛并支持控制系统开发。独轮车通常体积小巧、成本低廉，便于进行大规模集群实验，但难以胜任高速运动场景。车式机器人虽具备更高机动性，但其体积与成本往往较大，对空间与资金投入要求更高。为弥合这一差距，我们提出Chronos——一款搭载定制开源电子系统的1/28比例新型车式机器人，以及CRS——一套面向控制与机器人领域的开源软件框架。CRS软件框架集成了多种用于控制、估计及多智能体协同的现代算法实现。本研究旨在降低硬件获取难度，缩减启动新教育研究项目所需的工程开发时间。