Community Combined Robot Build
Hey everyone - there's been chatter about potentially working together to build a robot as a combined community effort. I don't believe anything like that has ever been attempted (or accomplished) before, anywhere. It would sure make waves in the industry! The idea was inspired by conversation about "struggling" or "failed" robot companies. Everyone has opinion feedback on what they believe the cause of the industry stagnancy is - and there's no right or wrong opinion because at this stage of the industry, different people/companies/products are affected by different industry challenges.
And, as a optimist, I suggested "Hey, there's no shortage of industry complaints and challenges, so why don't we talk about how to turn it around and build a robot that proves us right". If someone else can do it, we can do - so I'd rather it be us
So, like, wow... I get pretty stoked thinking about this whole thing. If we come up with an agreement on what a robot should do, we can split up the responsibilities and combine them into one project. It'll also help the software grow because I imagine there would be some interesting requirements.
On that note, I've moved all of the chatter on this topic here. What do you think? Let's work together and make something awesome!
I too would love to more robotics geared towards the sick and elderly . I think some years ago, there was a company down south that started to (Gekko Robotics I think). they started to make a personal assistant model and a wheel chair with built in robot arm. My mom, being a stroke victim is wheel chair bound and cant speak really any more, so she now gets state provided live-in care. Its what prompt me to build HEMI. I see a need for a mechanical device to help an aid/nurse with home care. I know they already have many devices out there but to me, some are nothing short of medieval torture devices. A robot with an ability interact with the aide and the client would be a nice next step, even adding some teaching and security features into the mix to help.
I am going to go back to my robot roots where I started with the Rad 2.o paranormal Robot because when ever I used it on these Haunted investigations I did actually get compelling EVP and photo evidence. designing the tech for the robot to go exploring in an old cluttered basement as a tele presence type investigator was so much fun and it got so much interest from other paranormal groups. Some even had TV shows where they started to copy what I was doing.MIne was stolen so I am going to start Fresh again with the Irobot Create 2. I will be trying to think up new ideas for how to build it and use it. I am still waiting for Irobot to ship it to me.Then the Fun begins.
I think self driving bulldozers makes a lot of sense - because they're generally used in controlled spaces, no in the public. So a "drive path" can be defined and let the robodozer do it's thing.
Wasnt there an automated bulldoze use to demo a house in the Will Smith movie "I,Robot" ?
We have a newer customer that’s moving into a pilot in a month and a half. It’s medical and elderly care related. It’s first job is specifically COVID precaution and includes exosphere.
Most of their requirement is entirely right out of the box and ARC + exosphere takes care of that. They have only one requirement which is a bit unique that I can’t explain due to their product privacy. But I can foresee it being very useful for their application.
we’ll make a demo video of it all when it’s up and running.
But, it’s definitely inspired me to want to build a robot with our community group as a collaborative effort. I’ll noodle some ideas around how to make it work - and what similar hardware we have to work with
I sent this email to a forum member but I thought I would share here and ask for input from others.
We are seeing an increase in delivery robots as a result of the pandemic. They are delivering food in condo's, hotel rooms etc. Restaurants who are permitted to stay open also want to protect staff. So delivering food to tables is also a requirement.
The idea is to start a company making lightweight low cost delivery robots. People are bringing delivery robots in from China but they retail starting at $10,000 https://www.robotshop.com/en/catalogsearch/result/?q=delivery&order=relevance&dir=desc
Clearpath was going to use the roomba to build a robot but they abandoned the project and opensourced everything 3 years ago. (BSD Licence) https://github.com/turtlebot-euclid/Turtlebot_Euclid. Not sure why they abandoned the project. I assume because they really didn't have a use case and the cost to buy Roomba back then were quite pricey. It was done with ROS but could easily be done in ARC, and I heard some rumours of ROS and ARC working together in a future release :-)
As others have pointed out and are working with the create2 (roomba 600) for $199 at the moment. https://store.irobot.com/default/create-programmable-programmable-robot-irobot-create-2/RC65099.html add a charging base that's $40 . if you developed a low cost shelving unit that housed all of the electronics, camera, battery, wifi etc and a couple of shelves for delivery. You could probably build the delivery robots for < $1000. Maybe you could sell for $2000-$3000.
We could probably make the base and shelves using a laser cutter and acrylic (3D printing is a little expensive and slow) and when you get some sales make in bulk aluminium like the Clearpath robot.
https://github.com/ibaranov-cp/Turtlebot_Euclid/blob/master/turtle-bot-euclid-6.jpg
https://www.robotshop.com/media/catalog/product/cache/image/1350x/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/k/e/keenon-commercial-delivery-robot-t6_1.jpg