Google, Intel, Microsoft Fund Robot Recipes

Dotnaught writes "Google, Intel, and Microsoft are funding what may become a robot invasion. Money from the three tech companies has enabled researchers at Carnegie Mellon University to create a new series of Internet-connected robots that almost anyone can build using off-the-shelf parts. These "recipes" describe how to build a robot that connects to the Internet using common parts and a $349 Qwerk controller from Charmed Labs."

Comments

Hows this for $350 - And it plays video games too!

[jdogalt]

$129 - Nintendo DS
$54 - Supercard-Lite-MicroSD
$15 - 1GB microSD
$49 - DSerial2
$99 - RoboDS
---
$350

Combine with the open source full linux wifi environment, and I don't know why you'd want to spend $350 on that controller (I'm lazy and haven't even read the specs on the thing, but seriously, I can't imagine there is anything the roboDS can't do that it could)

http://www.natrium42.com/shop/robods.php

-dmc/jdog

More about the project

[Falkkin]

As someone marginally involved with the project (my wife is Illah's student), I thought I might clear up some confusion that I've seen in the comments so far.

First of all, the writeup focuses a lot on the funding from Microsoft, Google, and Intel, but in reality these robots' hardware and software are being designed at Carnegie Mellon. Specifically, Microsoft isn't involved with any of the programming and design. The robots indeed run Linux, not Windows. They're not using the MS robotics studio to develop the robot.

This robot is primarily geared toward education: interesting kids in science and robotics. The project lead (Illah Nourbakhsh) has extensive experience creating science museum exhibits, tour-guide robots, and other forms of human-robot interaction. The networking functionality allows users to teleoperate the robot easily from a web browser.

Right now, the project has obtained funding for curriculum development, integrating the TeRK into beginning computer science courses at the junior college and university levels, in order to increase the appeal of computer science to people who might not otherwise be interested in the field.

Re:Overkill?

[camperdave]

Hardware

• 200 MHz ARM9 RISC processor with MMU and hardware floating point unit
• 32 Mbytes SDRAM, 8 Mbytes flash memory
• Latest generation Xilinx Spartan 3E FPGA for custom I/O peripherals
• Linux 2.6 installed
• WiFi wireless networking support
• WebCam video input support
• 4 Amp switching power supply, 90% efficient, 7 to 30 Volt input range
• Rugged aluminum enclosure
• 5.1" x 5.8" x 1.3", 11.8 ozs

I/O

• 4 closed-loop 2.0 Amp motor controllers (supports both quadrature encoder and back-EMF "sensorless" feedback)
• 16 RC-servo controllers
• 16 programmable digital I/Os
• 8 12-bit analog inputs
• 2 RS-232 ports
• USB 2.0 host ports for connecting standard USB PC peripherals
• 10/100BT Ethernet port
• Built-in audio amp for playing MP3 and WAV files

More than I could squeeze out of a $10 microcontroller and a couple of dollars worth of driver silicon. If you can, I bow to you. However, for us mortals, it's often easier to learn from a kit than to start from scratch, and this seems like one powerful little kit.