Fujitsu Releases Specs For Hackable Robot

S. Allen writes: "According to this article, Fujitsu will release the specifications to their RT-Linux based humanoid robot next week to encourage development and research. The article states, 'The software used to program Hoap-1 will run on RT-Linux -- a version of the open-source operating system that is designed for robotic applications, as well as data acquisition and systems control functions. Simulation software will let users test their code before letting it loose on Hoap-1'"

Comments

Umass videos

[drDugan]

U-Mass has a cool collections of Robot videos here from their Laboratory for Perceptual Robotics: http://www-robotics.cs.umass.edu/robotics-mpegs.ht ml -- a must see for those interested in robotics.

More info wanted.

[brad3378]

I've been looking for something similar to this as a starting point for a fun project I've been working on.
It's a CD changer for a CD burner. (My sincere appoligies for slashdotting their webserver.)

My original goal was to create a cheap robot that:

can lift a fresh CD using suction cups (not shown in picture)

use eject & eject -t commands to open & close CD tray

burn CD via shell script

when finished, switch CDs and start all over

drive mechanism using cheap rotating threaded rod (worm drive)

wooden frame (cheap & easy to build)

use Jeremy Elson's Parapin program to control the device via parallel port

goal 1 - make it cheaper than $50 to build. using easy to find parts

goal 2 - make it easy for others to build.

The ultimate hack would be to combine it with a MP3 database, napster, perl script,and wget to download and burn the billboard top 40 (or similar concept)

A project like this is not meant to be practical.
Just something fun that hasn't been done before. Yes, I have seen a similar lego robot that works with a home audio system, but it only had about 7 disks available, it looked like a tough mechanism to integrate with a Computer tower, and the basic lego mindstorms sets sell for about $200.00

Comments/suggestions/related links welcome and strongly encouraged.

Software is the key

[Codeala]

The reason it is (relatively) cheap, hackable is probably because they are looking for good software to run future robots. For example someone may work out a good algorithm that combine robotic vision and motor control to make some kind of rescue bot that can crawl into small places. Or work out a way for a robot to be able to right itself if it falls down.

I bet their idea is to have generic robots that can do many different tasks base solely on the software; rather than spending lots of money building very specialized robots that can only do one or two things. Actually this is just like real human! We are more or less the same physically, but we are trained to do many different tasks without growing extra arms or eyes.

So if you work in an university with a good size robotic research group you can probably convince them to send one to you for free :-)