I am back from spring break. As of today, I should have significantly more time to dedicate to this site, unless school/real work builds up on me again.

Anyway, I just stumbled upon the Open Automation project. This ‘open source’ project has the following mission statement:

To fill the gap between the powerful mobile robot platforms typically used by researchers, and the small rug-roving robots with limited processing power that are popular with hobbyists.

The specific project goals are:

1. Design a coherent set of modular components (hardware and software) that conform to standards (where possible), and implement the functionality of an intelligent mobile robot. Use pre-built components that are readily available where possible (and when such pre-built components are affordable).
2. Minimize cost. It should be possible to build a robot for around the price of a PC (target: US$1,500 to $2,000). Consumer grade hardware components are to be used in preference to professional grade products.
3. Focus on stereo vision as the primary spatial sensor to produce useful space occupancy data. Central to the success of this project is the implementation of a functioning low-cost real-time vision system. The prevalence of FireWire-enabled WebCams and mainboards makes this goal reachable from the standpoint of cost; the difficult part here is the software.

With two firewire webcams for eyes, a mini-itx brain, 4-12 sonar sensors, an I2C speech synthesizer, an LCD, the drive and chassis, and more, the bill of materials is not cheap. However, the prototype is really cute. If you want an overview of how it works, there is a block diagram of the system.

Unfortunately, the project seems to be hibernating right now, and there is not much detail on what to do when you are finished building the it. I would really love to build my own robot, but I would not know what to do with it.