Open source robot: your next personal assistant
The goal of Willow Garage startup is the creation of robotics, useful for everyday life.
Imagine a robot that brings you a beer, and then washes the kitchen and cleans the room. This is exactly what the Willow Garage start-up in Menlo Park, California is hard at. But the company does not do it alone: ​​Willow Garage is an open source project that needs as many external private owners as possible.
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One of the priorities is the creation of 10 robots and providing them to university researchers as a common platform that can be improved. Willow Garage also provides “Open Source code base compiled from the best available open source robotic software,” said President and CEO Steve Cousins ​​on Wednesday at the O'Reilly ETech conference in San Diego.
Cousins ​​demonstrated a video of the first prototype from Willow Garage, which moves on wheels and is “incredibly strong,” as Kuzins said. “The prototype can move inside any building that complies with the Americans with Disabilities Act and do useful work.
Willow Garage collaborates with the STAIR project at Stanford University and has already donated $ 850000 to the Stanford Computer Science Lab. Willow Garage was founded by Scott Hassan, who helped Larry Page and Sergey Brin develop Google technology.
Using own funds, making a profit is not the primary task, said Kuzin. The project will be successful if you end up with a useful technology, even if someone else makes money on it, he said.
In the presentation video, Cousin, the first version of the robot vacuum cleaner, collected toys from the floor of the room, took out plates from the dishwasher and, most importantly, opened a cold, refreshing beer using an opener.
While shining, human-like robots walk on their feet instead of rolling on wheels, the Willow Garage looks like a small number of metal pieces joined together in a more random way than Rosie from Jonesons. However, the appearance is not the same as functionality. Two-legged robots are not so useful with the current level of technology, and Willow Garage waits until the movement problem is resolved before screwing the legs onto their robot.
"Our task is to create a useful robot in the shortest possible time," said Kuzin. “We want to bring robotics into homes”
The robot shown in the Willow Garage video is not standalone, being mostly a demonstration of the capabilities of the equipment. The second version, which we hope will be released at the end of the year and, as Kuzin said, will be provided to researchers.
The robot will be equipped with synchronous positioning and mapping (SLAP), a technique commonly used to create maps (plans) of unknown locations and to safely navigate to a new zone. Cameras and laser scanners combined with an image database will allow the robot to recognize objects before picking them up. If the robot removes toys from the floor, he must be able to recognize the Lego designer and know where to put it. The robot needs to “have an idea of ​​what a Lego is,” said Kuzin. “We are almost close to the level where you can train the vision systems”
Kuzin recalled the time when a teenager could spend the whole day trying to fix his car. The strict rules of automotive safety have made this practice a little more dangerous, but anyone with sufficient knowledge can improve the Willow Garage robot platform and find new applications for it, as well as software developers are constantly inventing new applications for the personal computer.
“We do not know how impressive the applications of the platform will be,” said Kuzin.
link to my blog
Imagine a robot that brings you a beer, and then washes the kitchen and cleans the room. This is exactly what the Willow Garage start-up in Menlo Park, California is hard at. But the company does not do it alone: ​​Willow Garage is an open source project that needs as many external private owners as possible.
')
One of the priorities is the creation of 10 robots and providing them to university researchers as a common platform that can be improved. Willow Garage also provides “Open Source code base compiled from the best available open source robotic software,” said President and CEO Steve Cousins ​​on Wednesday at the O'Reilly ETech conference in San Diego.
Cousins ​​demonstrated a video of the first prototype from Willow Garage, which moves on wheels and is “incredibly strong,” as Kuzins said. “The prototype can move inside any building that complies with the Americans with Disabilities Act and do useful work.
Willow Garage collaborates with the STAIR project at Stanford University and has already donated $ 850000 to the Stanford Computer Science Lab. Willow Garage was founded by Scott Hassan, who helped Larry Page and Sergey Brin develop Google technology.
Using own funds, making a profit is not the primary task, said Kuzin. The project will be successful if you end up with a useful technology, even if someone else makes money on it, he said.
In the presentation video, Cousin, the first version of the robot vacuum cleaner, collected toys from the floor of the room, took out plates from the dishwasher and, most importantly, opened a cold, refreshing beer using an opener.
While shining, human-like robots walk on their feet instead of rolling on wheels, the Willow Garage looks like a small number of metal pieces joined together in a more random way than Rosie from Jonesons. However, the appearance is not the same as functionality. Two-legged robots are not so useful with the current level of technology, and Willow Garage waits until the movement problem is resolved before screwing the legs onto their robot.
"Our task is to create a useful robot in the shortest possible time," said Kuzin. “We want to bring robotics into homes”
The robot shown in the Willow Garage video is not standalone, being mostly a demonstration of the capabilities of the equipment. The second version, which we hope will be released at the end of the year and, as Kuzin said, will be provided to researchers.
The robot will be equipped with synchronous positioning and mapping (SLAP), a technique commonly used to create maps (plans) of unknown locations and to safely navigate to a new zone. Cameras and laser scanners combined with an image database will allow the robot to recognize objects before picking them up. If the robot removes toys from the floor, he must be able to recognize the Lego designer and know where to put it. The robot needs to “have an idea of ​​what a Lego is,” said Kuzin. “We are almost close to the level where you can train the vision systems”
Kuzin recalled the time when a teenager could spend the whole day trying to fix his car. The strict rules of automotive safety have made this practice a little more dangerous, but anyone with sufficient knowledge can improve the Willow Garage robot platform and find new applications for it, as well as software developers are constantly inventing new applications for the personal computer.
“We do not know how impressive the applications of the platform will be,” said Kuzin.
link to my blog
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/31458/
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