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Documentation

Hardware

Calvin is built around two compute platforms, a brushless drive system, and a suite of sensors — all packaged into a compact wheeled chassis.

System Overview

Cogitator Jetson Orin Nano Super 8 GB

OAK-D Pro W stereo camera  ·  Vision inference  ·  LLM processing (planned)  ·  WebSocket API gateway

USB-C Serial (UART)
▾
Instinctus Teensy 4.1
ARM Cortex-M7 · 600 MHz

IMU & ToF reads  ·  Serial bridge  ·  PID balance loop  ·  ODrive CAN commands

ICM-20948 IMU  ·  VL53L4CX × 2 ToF

via I²C

CAN Bus  ·  250 kbps  ×  2
▾
ODrive S1
Left Controller
D5312S Motor
170 KV · direct drive
ODrive S1
Right Controller
D5312S Motor
170 KV · direct drive

01 Teensy 4.1

Single-Core Architecture

The Teensy 4.1 is built on the NXP i.MX RT1062, an ARM Cortex-M7 running at 600 MHz. All Instinctus tasks — sensor reads, serial comms, the PID balance loop, and CAN bus motor commands — run on this single high-speed core.

  • Reads IMU and ToF sensors via I²C
  • Manages serial link to Cogitator
  • Runs PID balance control loop
  • Drives ODrive motor commands over CAN bus

Key Specs

SoC NXP i.MX RT1062
Core ARM Cortex-M7 · 600 MHz
RAM 1 MB (512 KB tightly-coupled + 512 KB general)
Flash 8 MB onboard
Connectivity USB · Ethernet · SD card
CAN bus Built-in FlexCAN · 250 kbps

02 Sensors

ICM-20948 IMU (Adafruit #4554)

I²C

9-axis IMU providing accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer data. Used to estimate the robot's tilt angle for the balance control loop.

  • 3-axis gyroscope (±2000 dps)
  • 3-axis accelerometer (±16 g)
  • 3-axis magnetometer (±4900 µT)
  • Read via I²C, fused angle feeds balance loop

VL53L4CX Time-of-Flight (× 2) (Adafruit #5425)

I²C

Dual front-facing ToF ranging sensors for obstacle detection. Mounted at different heights to detect both floor obstacles and objects at mid-body level.

  • Range: up to 6 m
  • 940 nm invisible laser
  • Multi-target detection capability
  • I²C address offset via XSHUT pins

03 Drive System

ODrive S1 (× 2)

Single-axis brushless motor controllers with integrated encoder support. Communicate with Instinctus via CAN bus using the ODrive CAN protocol.

  • CAN bus · 250 kbps
  • Field-oriented control (FOC)
  • Velocity + torque modes
  • Onboard encoder interface
  • Up to 56 V / 40 A per axis

D5312S Motors (× 2)

High-torque brushless outrunner motors commonly used in drone and robotics applications. Direct drive — no gearbox.

  • Stator: 53 mm diameter
  • KV rating: ~170 KV
  • Peak torque: ~1.5 N·m
  • Direct drive · no gearbox

CAN Bus

Both ODrive S1 controllers share a single CAN bus segment wired to the Teensy 4.1's built-in FlexCAN peripheral.

  • Speed: 250 kbps
  • Topology: daisy-chain, 120 Ω terminator
  • Protocol: ODrive ASCII CAN
  • Node IDs: 0x01 (L), 0x02 (R)

04 Jetson Orin Nano (Cogitator)

Jetson Orin Nano Super 8 GB

NVIDIA's Orin Nano Super module. Provides 67 TOPS of AI performance in a compact form factor — more than sufficient for vision inference, object detection, and future LLM tasks.

CPU 6-core Arm Cortex-A78AE
GPU 1024-core Ampere · 32 Tensor cores
AI Perf 67 TOPS
RAM 8 GB LPDDR5 (shared CPU/GPU)
Storage NVMe SSD via M.2
OS JetPack 6.2 (Ubuntu 22.04 base)

OAK-D Pro W Camera

Luxonis OAK-D Pro W is a wide-angle stereo depth camera with onboard DepthAI inference acceleration. Connects to the Jetson via USB-C.

  • Stereo depth at up to 30 fps
  • Wide FOV RGB + mono stereo pair
  • Onboard MyriadX VPU for neural inference
  • Active dot projector (Pro) for low-light depth
  • USB 3.1 Gen 1 · DepthAI Python SDK

05 Audio

ReSpeaker 4-Mic Array

USB

Seeed Studio's circular 4-microphone array, designed for far-field voice capture. Connects to the Jetson Orin Nano via USB and presents as a standard ALSA audio device. Used for wake-word detection and voice command input.

  • 4 × MEMS microphones in circular layout
  • Up to 5 m pickup range
  • Onboard AEC, beamforming & noise suppression
  • 12 programmable RGB LEDs (via USB HID)
  • USB Audio Class — no driver required on Linux

Visaton FR58 + MAX98357A (Adafruit #3006)

I²S

A Visaton FR 58 full-range driver (8 Ω) paired with the Adafruit MAX98357A I²S amplifier breakout. The amp decodes I²S directly from the Jetson, requiring no separate DAC. Output is mono, sufficient for voice synthesis and audio feedback.

  • Speaker: Visaton FR 58, 8 Ω, 2 W rated
  • Amp: MAX98357A · class D · up to 3.2 W @ 4 Ω
  • I²S input — BCLK, LRCLK, DIN from Jetson GPIO
  • Gain selectable via SD/MODE pin (6 / 9 / 12 / 15 dB)
  • No I²C address / no driver — PCM audio only