Open Source Hardware Makes its Debut in “Robot Internet Mashup”
Carnegie Mellon University researchers have developed a new series of robots that are
simple enough for almost anyone to build with off-the-shelf parts, but are sophisticated machines that wirelessly connect to the Internet.
Illah Nourbakhsh is a professor of robotics at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, which has one of the world's most prestigious robotics programs, and his research is funded by the likes of Google, Intel and Microsoft. But in the end, he says, he does it for the kids.
Qwerkbot, a three-wheeled robot that can send images over the Internet, is one of several robots that can be built with the Telepresence Robot Kit (TeRK), a combination of a robot controller, commonly available parts and assembly instructions (recipes) developed by the CREATE Lab in Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute. Photo credit: Ken Andreyo/CMU
"[TeRK] is not only open from a software perspective, but also from a hardware perspective," Legrand says. "That's something this industry has never seen."
via [ scientific american ]
