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 could see that. If its gonna deliver food in a restaurant. You might want it to be able to hold the typical server tray, and the bots hight should be slighty taller than the average table height.
The hospital in my town uses robots to deliver meds, blood,and and food to all rooms and on all floors, guded by wireless sensors in the celing on each floor.
Robot dev cost are def a big factor. Ive been working on HEMI a lilttle over a year now and its cost me close to $10K US already.
Should be interestingto see what we could come up with here
Height is one of the issues with the Roomba. I built my telepresence robot with one and it is a little unstable. I need to print out the new bin and add a caster wheel for greater stability. I agree on the dev costs being a major drain and building a self charging robot is a huge expense but bolting on components on an existing robot should take costs and time down. VSLAM is maturing and GPU/CPU integrated solutions like Jetson Xavier NX are coming down in price $400 and will open up robot vision to low cost robots. https://www.seeedstudio.com/NVIDIA-Jetson-Xavier-NX-Developer-Kit-p-4573.html @DJ We we really need a containerized .net core version of ARC on linux so we can take advantage of these types of technology. You can use exosphere to map out the environment and train and use exosphere when issues occur.
Hey Nink that Keenon body looks pretty futuristic on the Roomba,really like that,must be light weight and still house the electronic expansion boards, Robotshop sells bodies that could fit roomba as well, The create 2 comes with the charging station so no need to buy that extra $40.00 .The height is always an issue depending what floor or terrain it needs to travel on, I was able to fit all my electronics on the Roomba cover plate but looks like a bird nest all compacted on small area. so for sure will look at different body types I can interchange with...Halloween can be a Zombie or Terminator,take to hospital and could be that Futuristic body, I do believe Telepresence(did i spell that correct?) will be part of the futeure as in Japan they are all over the place in Airports and stuff as Information booth robots and like I said what sick kid in a hospital does not love a cute robot coming to visit?
Hi Robo Rad, Great news re charging station included. Already saved $40 we could use that for an LED display. I don't think it is actually a Roomba under the Keenon I just thought it was a good design of what it could look like although you couldn't have that many shelves as I don't believe it could handle the weight (maybe 2 shelves). I like your idea of interchangeable clip on bodies depending on what it needs to do. Business model could be something like $100 a week for Robot as a Service (Maybe min 3 months so we recoup costs) this way we can have people monitoring the robots, cover maintenance etc. If the use case doesn't work that's ok, they send the robot back and we use it for another use case/customer.
Ya I just found a great body for 20 bucks at Walmart to get started extremely light weight black hard plastic fits perfectly over Roomba and if too tall it can be reduced to half size as it is 2 pieces.My other Cylon project head is also just right size. Can't wait to see the Cylon vacuum and then return to charging dock shut itself down to recharge.This is a great winter project. The Ezb , battery and electronics all fit in
A telepresence Roomba on the table would clean some plates for sure!!
The vacuum suction power is impressive on these Roombas,mine is missing the brushes but it is still picking up very fine dust!
I think if we wanted to use a Roomba as delivery bot we would need to widen the base of the Roomba and make it a little more stable with some more casters. Probably 2 casters at the back a bit like this.