The Open Source Robotics Foundation (OSRF) Is Booting Up | Hacker News Reader

The Open Source Robotics Foundation (OSRF) Is Booting Up

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29 pointstomh11 comments

Modular, open-source robotics running on ROS is clearly the way to go vs. the expensive 'black box' proprietary platform / software. From the conversations I've had with people in the industry, it certainly feels like robotics is approaching a paradigm shift thanks to ROS / modular / open-source approaches.

For any robotics hackers out there, check out Clearpath Robotics' Turtlebot - http://clearpathrobotics.com/turtlebot. I know the Clearpath guys, definitely good people / good products / closely aligned to the open-source / ROS movement.

Also of note here should be Redwood Robotics: http://redwoodrobotics.com They'll be making the hardware behind all of this, and are a for-profit spin-out of Willow Garage.

MEKA and SRI are their two other partners and are no slouches.

They have a difficult problem space that they're working in - it will be very interesting to see if they can pull it off.

Thanks for pointing this out!

Yes, this is good stuff! Advanced robots today are often very expensive. But I hope soon what happened to computers will happen to robots. Advanced robotics becoming a very popular yet not expensive to participate in hobby would be the first step in that.

If there is a roadblock for robotics, I don't think it is the hardware. Yes, cutting-edge robots are very expensive, but more problematic? Control software for anything advanced is crazy; not the sort of thing I expect a hobbyist can write, whether or not he owns a super robot.

But if hardware slowly standardizes, library control for it could also standardize and be open source. Look at how the Kinect changed visual processing. It used to be a very complicated thing, now it's just get a Kinect and hack it.

Part of it is hardware costs, part of it is human nature. Many robot hobbyists I know fall into the "That part is $X? I can build it for $X/N!!!"

Soon they have no robot, and half a part.

Well, that's been true, but there's hope. I'm a robot hobbyist and I need lots of linear actuators (like dozens or hundreds) for a project I'm working on. I can't believe how expensive they can be (between $50 and $150 a piece). So, I've fixed that for myself that by starting my open hardware project - http://bitbeam.org. My first stab at my DIY actuator: http://youtu.be/YO-7tiwibiY

Doing it myself (with a laser cutter at TechShop SF), I'm able to get my own linear actuator cost down to about $3 per actuator. Not perfect, but way better. Next step will be to figure out how to make my own DC motors to drive down costs further. :-)

As fab tools like 3D printers (MakerBot) get cheaper and tools get easier to access (TechShop), more robot hobbyists will have robots and cheaper parts. :-)

You are part of the top 1% then. Most makers try to cobble something together and don't approach it from first principles.

3D printers need to print high strength components and TechShops need to be all over the country before I think we'll see this take off. =) Also, at scale, things get cheaper - why not look at scaling your actuator production? What would it take?

What would it take? The biggest thing I need is knowing there's a market, how big the market is, and who to market to -- classic customer development activities. Right now, I know my actuators meet my needs for the stuff I'm building, but need more data to know if I should scale it. So... you want one (hundred thousand)? :-)

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