Advanced Robot Networking Guide

This guide is intended for the technical/IT team of customers who need to connect their robot to a WiFi network with Certificates, or by configuring a USB drive to more quickly configure large numbers of robots.

Pre-requisites

• See additional information at RoboKind Networking Requirements and Security Considerations

• A virus scanned and empty USB thumb drive formatted with the FAT file system

Thumb Drive based WiFi setup without Certificates

1. Plug in and turn on the robot, which will be needed later in the instructions.

2. Insert your empty, virus scanned thumb drive into the computer being used to configure the thumb drive, and make note of the drive letter.

3. Save the modified file in the root directory of a USB thumb drive that is blank and formatted as FAT32.

4. Check to make sure that the file saved on the thumb drive is named wifi.conf. If the text editor adds an extension such as .TXT, it will not work.

5. Eject the USB thumb drive, but do not yet insert it into the robot.

6. Verify that the robot is powered on, within range of the desired 2.4Ghz WiFi network, and on the MAIN MENU screen.

7. Plug the USB drive into the robot’s rear panel.

8. Upon successful configuration, the robot will speak it’s IP Address.

If the robot does not respond to the drive being inserted within 30 seconds, then see Troubleshooting - USB Flash Drive.

9. From the robot, run a network test. How-To Test Robot Network Connectivity

Thumb Drive WiFi Setup with Certificates

1. Contact your information technology team to create a network account with appropriate security permissions and network access. RoboKind Networking Requirements and Security Considerations

2. Generate the certificates required for step 3 for the given network account. Supported certificate formats are PEM (recommended) or DER. PKCS#12/.cer files are not supported.

3. Save the following files to your blank, virus scanned thumb drive.

   1. The CA_CERT file (if available)

   2. The CLIENT_CERT file

   3. The PRIVATE_KEY file. (If this does not come in a file, you can create a file named PRIVATE_KEY.key, and save the text into the file).

4. Plug in and turn on the robot, which will be needed later in the instructions.

5. Extract the contents of the following .ZIP file to a temporary directory on your computer. (DO NOT SAVE TO YOUR THUMB DRIVE YET).

6. Copy the nm_conf and autorun-r25 files to the root directory of your thumb drive.

7. Edit the nm_conf file on the thumb drive with a text editor such as notepad.

8. Make the following edits in the nm_conf file:

Identity= line: Replace ROBOT'S_NETWORK_USERNAME with the account which the robot will be authenticating.

ca-cert= line: Replace EXAMPLE_CA_CERT with the exact file name and extension of the CA Cert file saved on the thumb drive. This will usually have a .pem extension, which should be included.

client-cert= line: Replace EXAMPLE_CLIENT_CERT with the exact file name and extension of the client cert file saved on the thumb drive. This will usually have a .pem extension, which should be included.

private-key= line: Replace EXAMPLE_PRIVATE_KEY with the exact file name and extension of the private key file saved on the thumb drive. This will usually have a .key extension, which should be included.

private-key-password= line: Replace PRIVATE_KEY'S_PASSWORD with the exact file name and extension of the private key file saved on the thumb drive.

9. Insert your empty, virus scanned thumb drive into the computer being used to configure the thumb drive, and make note of the drive letter. Save the above created files to the drive such that there are 4 or 5 files total, including the personalized file named nm_conf, the autorun-r25 file (both without extensions), and the applicable certificate files.

10. Verify that the robot is powered on, within range of the desired 2.4Ghz WiFi or 5GHz WiFi network, and on the MAIN MENU screen or on the initial WiFi setup screen.

11. Plug the USB drive into the robot’s rear panel. If the USB drive is formatted as FAT32 and the script is working, the robot should announce it’s progress in starting and completing the configuration. If not, please see Troubleshooting - USB Flash Drive.

12. On the robot’s chest screen, choose:

• Utilities

• Network

• Network Info

• WiFi (button is on the 2nd row up)

make sure the 2nd line reads “Name:” and the SSID of the desired network. If this fails, reboot the robot and check again.

13. From the robot, run a network test. How-To Test Robot Network Connectivity