Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Linux-Controlled Segway Robot

Posted by timothy on from the idle-rich-adjust-the-throttle dept.

ptorrone writes "It was just a matter of time until the Segway technology would be used as a robotics platform. University of Southern California Robotics Lab's Segway RMP (Robotic Mobility Platform) has a lot of great information if you're looking to convert a Segway to a robot. On the site there are videos as well as instruction on how to build your own." Update: 07/13 21:30 GMT by T : Dr. Andrew Howard writes with an important clarification about the project: "This is *not* a standard Segway HT that we have converted to robotics applications. Rather, this is a customized, limited production unit that has been specially modified by the manufacturer. The web-site does *not* show how to convert an existing Segway HT into a robotic platform."

4 of 123 comments (clear)

  1. Open Source Segway? More like Open Sores Segway by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you Open Source fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a Linux box (a P4 3200 w/1024 Megs of RAM) for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to copy a 17 Meg file from one folder on the hard drive to another folder. 20 minutes. At home, on my Athlon 900 running Windows XP, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this Linux box, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.
    In addition, during this file transfer, Mozilla will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even vi is straining to keep up as I type this.

    I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various Linux machines, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a Linux box that has run faster than its Windows counterpart, despite the Linux machine's faster chip architecture. My 486/66 with 8 megs of ram runs faster than this 3200 mhz machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that Linux is a "superior" OS.

    Open Source addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use an Open Source over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.

  2. MY PANTS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    suck it down fool

  3. How about? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    A how-to for not looking completely gay while riding a Segway?

  4. segway == homosexual by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    apple == homosexual
    Steve Jobs == flaming homosexual