Someone Made A Flexpicker Industrial Robot Out of Legos

Open Source Robotics would rely on having access to lathes, milling machines, electronics equipment, etc. that most interested people don't have.

There are cottage industries of hobbyists that will supply the electronics and sensors at very reasonable cost, but the high cost items are always the mechanical bits.

The thing with hobby robotics is that it's very easy to build something simple; the problem is once you go beyond a little rugrat robot that scurries around the living room avoiding obstacles and annoying the cat, the next stage requires vastly more resources and a lot of commitment.

My personal problem is that I have the resources (lots of tools and misc. electromechanical hardware in my "lab"); I just don't have the time to build something I would think of as "cool."

Having a day job where I write code for complex moving mechanisms takes away from the "cool factor" of anything I have time to do at home :-(

Beyond the cool factor of the robot itself, the article makes a great point about the need for something more advanced than Lego Mindstorms, but practical for an enthusiastic hobbyist.

The author uses an analog to the App store, but Linux is probably a better reference. Are there open source possibilities for robotics?

How would you frame it? People could work on sub components? Do you have a RoboFair to show off what has been built? Have a more participatory kind of BattleBots event?

In any case it is a cool opportunity to have intelligent roboticists have an outlet for their work that is more additive than the YouTube video that will be passed around tech blogs and ultimately forgotten.

Pretty impressive. I don't know who to praise, if the people that do these amazing things or the people that design lego mindstorm parts in the first place...

BTW, although those japanese humanoid robots that run, climb stairs and whatnot are much more complex, I find the FlexPicker robot much more impressive. I wonder why...

There's something a bit frightening about it. I think it's registering as a giant spider in the primal instinct section of my brain.

i wish i was smart