Waveshare UGV Rover Open-Source 6 Wheels 4WD AI Robot,Compatible with Raspberry Pi 5, Dual Controllers, Comes with Pan-Tilt Module, PI5-4GB Included

Pros:The robot is well built with a powder-coated aluminum chassis and bearings on the pan/tilt gimbal.The code is open source and there is a Jupyterlab server on the supplied Raspberry Pi.Jupyterlab contains examples of OpevCV and Flask applications to perform various robot tasks.The headlight LED's are more than bright enough. I'm sure they would work fine in total darkness.Cons:The robot was poorly assembled with loose hardware - I had to disassemble to fix. Why not ship unassembled?IMU support has been deprecated, despite the claim that IMU is included on the robot.Tech support is much slower to respond than promised on their website.Web site has good documentation, but is not well-linked. Best to use Perplexity, ChatGPT, or Google to search for information.ESP32 base application has some bugs, but is usable.There is no ROS2 installation on the robot.Despite the issues, I like the robot overall. It's not for the inexperienced, you will need to have knowledge of Linux, networking, and python programming. OpenCV and Flask would be good to know as well. I wanted to experiment with ROS2, but since it's not already installed, I'm not ready to suffer through that exercise. I've installed ROS2 on a Raspberry Pi with Ubuntu, but this is a Debian Bookworm installation, and it will probably need to be compiled from source for that to work.This would be a great project for an advanced high school or college-level programming/robotics program, but generally not for kids.

I was looking for a wheel-base rover that is a fit for a real world task of surveying and mapping indoor space and I found this UGV02. It is well built, well designed, and is a solid robotic platform for adding peripheral/device that you actually need to perform specific tasks that you have for it.It came with everything you need to switch on and operate. Raspberry Pi 5 ( Jetson Nano version also available) served as the main computer provide plenty of computing power and I/O expansion while an ESP32 board performs lower level tasks; off-loading the Pi CPU. It comes with a PTZ camera and remote switchable task light. I added a LIDAR to it with ease.Documentations is plentiful on their website though could use some updating. After sales support is pretty responsive and helpful.

Very easy to control with either phone or laptop. Still figuring out the programming - first time I am working with Pi. Customer service is pretty much non-existent. Tried to get a spare dongle for the remote. Was told someone from sales would contact me . . . still waiting after several weeks.(Also, less expensive by a fair amount if you get it thru Waveshare's website. Just sayin')