Comments on: Willow Garage Robotics http://www.foresight.org/nanodot/?p=3121 examining transformative technology Wed, 03 Apr 2013 18:23:47 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.4 By: Dan Donahoe http://www.foresight.org/nanodot/?p=3121#comment-859485 Dan Donahoe Fri, 03 Jul 2009 15:09:09 +0000 http://www.foresight.org/nanodot/?p=3121#comment-859485 Nice video. Nice video.

]]> By: Nathan Monson http://www.foresight.org/nanodot/?p=3121#comment-859463 Nathan Monson Fri, 26 Jun 2009 20:55:45 +0000 http://www.foresight.org/nanodot/?p=3121#comment-859463 CAD and PCB designs are available on their public SVN. But I don't think their hardware strategy includes a 10,000 step Instructables site for building your own PR2 robot. ;) PR2 costs more than a house, and requires multidisciplinary expertise to build your own. Instead, I think their strategy is to loan actual PR2s to researchers for free, in return for their software enhancements. As for the software, it runs on much cheaper platforms. You don't need a PR2 to play along at home. You can glue a laptop to a Roomba, buy a <$2K laser scanner, and have their OS up and running pretty quickly. CAD and PCB designs are available on their public SVN. But I don’t think their hardware strategy includes a 10,000 step Instructables site for building your own PR2 robot. ;) PR2 costs more than a house, and requires multidisciplinary expertise to build your own.

Instead, I think their strategy is to loan actual PR2s to researchers for free, in return for their software enhancements.

As for the software, it runs on much cheaper platforms. You don’t need a PR2 to play along at home. You can glue a laptop to a Roomba, buy a <$2K laser scanner, and have their OS up and running pretty quickly.

]]> By: Ken Conley http://www.foresight.org/nanodot/?p=3121#comment-859460 Ken Conley Fri, 26 Jun 2009 17:55:00 +0000 http://www.foresight.org/nanodot/?p=3121#comment-859460 Thanks for the writeup of Steve's talk. To answer the question about open hardware, It's designed to be very hackable: we intend for people to modify the sensor packages on the package to their own needs and we also have been working with other hand manufacturers to provide some compatibility there as well. Our software is also intended to be generalizable to other robot hardware/sensors and has already been ported several times. But the robot isn't open in the open source sense like our software, mainly because even if we went through the effort of releasing every spec, its hard to imagine that others would benefit: there are too many parts with too high of a price tag for others to easily manufacture. That's one of the reasons why we're loaning out ten of the PR2s for others to use, i.e. making it as open as possible by providing access. Thanks for the writeup of Steve’s talk. To answer the question about open hardware, It’s designed to be very hackable: we intend for people to modify the sensor packages on the package to their own needs and we also have been working with other hand manufacturers to provide some compatibility there as well. Our software is also intended to be generalizable to other robot hardware/sensors and has already been ported several times. But the robot isn’t open in the open source sense like our software, mainly because even if we went through the effort of releasing every spec, its hard to imagine that others would benefit: there are too many parts with too high of a price tag for others to easily manufacture. That’s one of the reasons why we’re loaning out ten of the PR2s for others to use, i.e. making it as open as possible by providing access.

]]> By: Chris Peterson http://www.foresight.org/nanodot/?p=3121#comment-859454 Chris Peterson Wed, 24 Jun 2009 18:26:14 +0000 http://www.foresight.org/nanodot/?p=3121#comment-859454 The software is open source. What about the hardware: is it open as well? The software is open source. What about the hardware: is it open as well?

]]> By: Willow Garage Robotics | Everything News Portal! http://www.foresight.org/nanodot/?p=3121#comment-859452 Willow Garage Robotics | Everything News Portal! Wed, 24 Jun 2009 10:46:47 +0000 http://www.foresight.org/nanodot/?p=3121#comment-859452 [...] Read more … [...] [...] Read more … [...]

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