1. Overview

The m3pi robot is an upgraded version of our popular 3pi robot, consisting of a 3pi robot base connected to an m3pi expansion board that simplifies augmenting your robot’s capabilities with an mbed development board (or other microcontroller boards), wireless modules, and sensors.

The m3pi is available as a fully assembled robot (with the 3pi robot base included) or as an expansion kit that can be used to turn a 3pi robot into an m3pi robot.

Pololu 3pi robot on a 3/4" black line.

Since the m3pi robot is an expansion of the 3pi robot, it also has all the features of the 3pi robot:

• Max speed of around 100 cm/second
• Regulated motor voltage (performance is unaffected by battery voltage)
• 5 reflectance sensors on underside of leading edge for line following and maze solving
• 8×2 character LCD for debugging, feedback, and user interfaces
• Electromagnetic buzzer for simple sounds and music

Please see the 3pi robot product page for a more comprehensive description the 3pi’s features and 3pi resources (user’s guide, projects, videos, etc).

The rest of this user’s guide will help you get started with your m3pi robot or expansion kit.