Pleo is a robotic toy creature manufactured by Innvo Labs. It is a mobile robotic platform designed to create lifelike interactions. The product is relatively complex and uses separate control boards at each joint which communicate to a primary microcontroller. Each joint control board defined 4 degrees of freedom (DOF), with a total of 16 DOFs in the product. After running into late-stage issues, Acroname was contracted to re-develop embedded software for the motion control. By relying on Acroname's experience with robotic control systems and highly networked microcontrollers, Acroname produced customer-ship-ready control code in one month, including:
- Development of optimized, closed loop control firmware for multiple networked 8-bit MCUs
- Independent PID control algorithm for each motor
- Creation of regression tests to check firmware reliability
- Creation of proprietary SPI-bus bridge to test motion control by a host computer