iCub Robot Gets Battery Power with Help of Tektronix Oscilloscope, Voltage and Current Probes

Developers at the Istituto Italiano Di Tecnologia (IIT) needed to validate and troubleshoot a new battery backpack power supply system for the iCub robot, an open-source cognitive humanoid robot platform. This case study shows how IIT used the Tektronix MSO4104B oscilloscope with a TDP1000 differential probe, TCP0030 current probe and four TPP1000 probes along with DPO-4EMBD decoder modules to measure analog signals, power characteristics and bus communications. The IIT engineers were able to use the Tektronix Power Measurement tools to efficiently isolate problems, manage power spikes during start-up and characterize battery discharge. The ability to decode data streams proved vital to validating the CAN and I2C data across the three circuit boards also provide helpful in the battery backpack’s design.