Mobile and ROS robots

MentorPi A1

A Raspberry Pi 5 robot car with Ackermann steering for ROS2, with lidar SLAM, AI vision and YOLO detection.

Raspberry Pi
Suggested for secondary
Suggested for university

MentorPi A1 is the Ackermann version of MentorPi, a robot car built on the Raspberry Pi 5 and ROS2. Its front wheels are steered by a digital servo, as on a real car, and closed-loop encoder motors drive it. A lidar and a camera cover SLAM mapping, path planning and autonomous driving, and YOLOv11 detects road signs and traffic lights. The Starter Kit has a monocular camera and the Standard and Advanced kits a 3D depth camera. The Advanced Kit adds an AI voice interaction module that links the car to ChatGPT and vision language models. Hiwonder provides tutorials and videos.

Zeta42 is an authorised Hiwonder partner in the Middle East.

Configurations

Choose how it ships.

Model: MentorPi A1 Starter · MentorPi A1 Standard · MentorPi A1 Advanced
Controller: Without Raspberry Pi 5 · With Raspberry Pi 5 2GB · With Raspberry Pi 5 4GB · With Raspberry Pi 5 8GB · With Raspberry Pi 5 16GB

What it does

Built for.

Ackermann steering
A digital servo turns the front wheels for car-style steering. The chassis is anodised aluminium, with metal-gear encoder motors and anti-slip rubber wheels.
Lidar navigation
The lidar handles obstacle avoidance, target following, fixed-point and multi-point navigation, path planning and global task navigation.
3D depth camera
In the Standard and Advanced kits, the depth camera adds depth image processing, point clouds, and 3D visual mapping and navigation.
Vision and YOLO
With OpenCV the car tracks colours and targets, follows lines of a chosen colour and decodes QR codes. YOLOv11 detects road signs and traffic lights for model autonomous driving.
Voice and large AI models
In the Advanced Kit, a language model turns voice commands into multi-point navigation, and a vision language model describes the objects and events it finds on arrival. ChatGPT also drives colour tracking, vision tracking and line patrolling with obstacle avoidance.
Control
Drive it from the WonderPi app on iOS or Android, from PC software, or with a wireless controller over Bluetooth.

Where it is used

Applications.

ROS2 teaching on Raspberry Pi 5
Model autonomous driving with car-style steering, road signs and traffic lights
SLAM mapping and navigation projects
Embodied AI with voice commands (Advanced Kit)

Videos

See it run.

Specifications

The full sheet.

Size: 213 × 159 × 157 mm (depth camera version)
Weight: 1.2kg (depth camera version)
Chassis type: Ackermann chassis
Servos: LD-1501MG steering servo; LFD-01 anti-blocking camera servo (Starter Kit)
Motor: 310 metal gear geared motor
Encoder: AB-phase high-accuracy quadrature encoder
Material: Full metal aluminum alloy chassis, anodizing process
ROS controller: RRC Lite controller + Raspberry Pi 5 controller
Control method: App, wireless handle and PC control
Camera: Monocular camera (Starter Kit); Angstrong binocular 3D depth camera (Standard and Advanced Kit)
Depth camera range: 0.2-4m
Voice: WonderEcho Pro AI voice interaction box (Advanced Kit)
Battery: 7.4V 2200mAh 10C LiPo battery
OS: Raspberry Pi OS + Ubuntu 22.04 LTS + ROS2 Humble (Docker)
Software: iOS / Android app
Communication method: WiFi / Ethernet
Programming language: Python / C / C++ / JavaScript
Storage: 64GB TF card
Package size: 41 × 22 × 18 cm
Package weight: About 2.1kg