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Robotics Hardware Hacking Toys Hardware

Open Robotics Debuts at Penguicon 3.0 114

Posted by timothy from the plug-it-in-plug-it-in dept.
thgreatoz writes "While attending Penguicon 3.0 in Novi, MI, I came across an interesting project. Matt Switlik of Swittech aims to do for robotics what the GPL did for Open Source Software - a completely open robotics platform. Dubbed the Open Robotics Peripheral Platform, or O.R.P.P, Switlik and his partner Jason Hunt have taken a completely modular approach to robotics, with the goal of making robot development as easy as homegrowing a PC. Will we see fleets of ORPP robots plowing our streets and mowing our lawns in the future?"
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Open Robotics Debuts at Penguicon 3.0 More

Open Robotics Debuts at Penguicon 3.0

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  • 3 Laws (Score:5, Funny)

    by Stibidor ( 874526 ) on Monday April 25, 2005 @06:52PM (#12342089) Homepage
    Someone please make sure they read Asimov first!!

    • Re:3 Laws (Score:3, Funny)

      by SunPin ( 596554 )
      Defective products should be returned to the manufacturer. That simple rule would have made Kubrick's AI a 10 minute story.

    • Re:3 Laws (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The 3 Laws are just silly. A robot either couldn't interpret those kinds of rules or if it could you couldn't force them upon one.

      Sorry, I'm not sure what /. really thinks about the 3 laws, but to me they're just another part of fiction.

      • Re:3 Laws (Score:2, Informative)

        by Stibidor ( 874526 )
        I'm not sure that whoever marked my original post as "Interesting" understood that I was just being silly. There's no doubt the 3 laws are way beyond today's reality.

        Reading over my original post, I suppose it isn't really clear that I wasn't serious. That's what I get for ignoring the "Preview" button. Doh!

      • Re:3 Laws (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Corpus_Callosum ( 617295 )

        The 3 Laws are just silly. A robot either couldn't interpret those kinds of rules or if it could you couldn't force them upon one.

        While at first glance through the spectacles of today's theories of adaptive systems, the three laws looks terribly shortsighted, there is another angle that you can perceive them through.

        It is clear that computational intelligence will emerge through emergence and therefore be somewhat resilient to full analysis and control. That much is almost certain. For instance, h

    • I have. I even like the idea of a zero law. a human being has the right to end their own life. a robot may not stop a person from doing so as long as it does not harm another person physically. got the idea from Prime Intellect [kuro5hin.org]
    • Unfortunately, the 3 Laws are unrealistic for at least another 100-1000 years. The very notion of the 3 laws implies that Robots can be programed to make "moral" choices.. You can't even get get an "alice" bot to carry on a decent conversation...let alone understand the second and third meanings of what you're discussing..

      frankly, I think any "sencient" robot would be more like "bicentenial man"... meticilously taught over 100+ years to "figure out" how to act human...

      of course a "lifeform" doesn't mean

    • yeah, just try to stick to his non-fiction stuff!
    • there were actually 4 laws, one which the robots made up themselves later on.

      it read long something of the lines of like "robots must protect humanity as a whole" and allowed them to kill some people in order to save humanity (though it did result in the robots destruction)

  • Overlords (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by Tackhead ( 54550 )
    I, for one, welcome our herring-fed overlords!

  • More needed (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MHobbit ( 830388 ) <mhobbit09@UUUgmail.com minus threevowels> on Monday April 25, 2005 @06:55PM (#12342130)
    That sounds good; however, if there's going to be an open robotics platform, does that apply to the actual software powering them? They don't necessarily have to have the exact same software in O.R.P.P. compliant robots, but just the same "kernel", so that extra code could just be modular: added in when needed.

  • Why such sarcasm? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Sawopox ( 18730 ) * on Monday April 25, 2005 @06:57PM (#12342157) Homepage Journal
    I noticed the first few posts were full of sarcasm at this topic. I would think something like this, that could bring cheap, efficient robotics to the massess would be lauded more on Slashdot.

    That aside, I think this is something that has much promise. I am a beginning science teacher, and projects like this can be just the thing for young minds (even in old bodies.)

    • Re:Why such sarcasm? (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      noticed the first few posts were full of sarcasm at this topic. I would think something like this, that could bring cheap, efficient robotic sex-dolls to the massess would be lauded more on Slashdot. That aside, I think this is something that has much promise. I am a beginning science teacher, and projects like this can be just the thing for young minds (even in old bodies.)
  • Taking the fun out of sitting-down-at-the-workshop-bench-for-hours-upon- end -so-that-you-can-prove-your-intelectual-advantage. ......one step at a time :)

  • Jobs, jobs and jobs (Score:5, Interesting)

    by John Seminal ( 698722 ) on Monday April 25, 2005 @06:58PM (#12342179) Journal
    Will we see fleets of ORPP robots plowing our streets and mowing our lawns in the future?

    Will the USA become a place where the only jobs needed will be thought based. No more jobs where a person is needed to do a repetitious task over and over? Will the next outsorcing be not out of the USA, but from human labour to robots?

    I see so many problems here. What will people do for a living??

    I don't want this to sound like trolling, but it will. There are enough people out there who are not made for work which requires too much thought. Not everyone can pass Chemistry 101. Some people require the factory jobs to make enough money to buy a house, and live a life. If we start lowering the value of those jobs, we will be shoving a whole class of people into poverty.

    I also can't help but think of the horror of the next war we face. No more "human life lost", instead we'll send drone airplanes and robots to do the fighting. Mr and Mrs Redstate will no longer have to reconsider if a war is just when their child is killed ("Was it worth it?"). I wonder if we would have burned all of Vietnam down if we did not have to send any Americans, if we only had to send robots. We could declare the area too unsafe and keep the reporters out.

    • Re:Jobs, jobs and jobs (Score:4, Insightful)

      by kebes ( 861706 ) on Monday April 25, 2005 @07:30PM (#12342479) Journal
      I've heard this "but what will stupid people do when robots take away all the simple jobs?" complaint against automation from many people, and I just don't buy it.

      Despite considerable automation in industry, we still need droves of people to maintain these robots, to work desk jobs, to answer phones, to make decisions, etc. For instance, the current unemployment rate has very little to do with robots stealing jobs.

      Perhaps I'm more optimistic about the average human IQ, but I honestly believe that the average person will rise to the challenge of a more complicated job if their old job is replaced with a robot. I'm not saying the everyone can become an electrical engineer overnight, but in many cases people can handle (and even enjoy) a more interesting and technical job. Moreover, most of the jobs that robots take over are boring, annoying, or downright dangerous. No one wants to be doing those jobs. No one finds those jobs fullfilling and wonderful. So I see no reason why my fellow man should have to endure that crappy job if a machine can do it instead. Automation will push for a society where a greater % of the population is educated, and hence work in less boring jobs. This is a good thing, imho.

      • I agree with most of your points here. In fact, they're similar to thoughts I've had myself on this subject.

        However, there is the question of which jobs are the most boring for a human being. Many people who work indoors dream of switching to something completely different, like landscape gardening. I myself have switched from software development to forestry. Despite losing most of the intellectual stimulation that I thrive on in IT, I loved that simple work much more, and only switched back because

      • "Perhaps I'm more optimistic about the average human IQ"

        Well, I believe it's 100, what do you believe it is?
      • This is true, but what happens when AI has advanced to a level when robots are able to make their own decisions?

        They don't need to be able to pass a Turing test, just be able to answer a phone, count change, package groceries, or assemble parts.

        Once that happens, robots will be able to take over half of all current jobs. What "fulfilling and wonderful" jobs will replace them? Building robots? No, the robots ca do that.
    • A good percentage of the cost of most goods is due to labor and related expenses. If robots were doing all the mindless jobs then theoretically most goods should drastically drop in price allowing for an easy and abundant life for all.

      A good read about the ramifications of such a situation is "voyage from yesteryear" by James p. Hogan.

      • Voyage from Yesteryear was a fun book and all, but even the society it postulated was not arrived at by transitions from our current one. It was formed by people that were raised by the robots and with the robot labor pool from the beginning, without any inertia from history. In fact, the point of the book is the conflict between the two systems when they interact.

        The only reason it seemed realistic that the "free" society won out was that they were larger, entrenched, and prepared. Any transition to th

    • "instead we'll send drone airplanes and robots to do the fighting."

      Actually, if the demographics are anything to go by, the USA will *need* to do this; not enough youg people are considered 'fit for military service' to effectively replace combat losses.

      This is not something that the US military government wishes the world to know (that their military is a paper tiger), hence the figures which would lead to these conclusions were quicly removed from the CIA world factbook.

      Sure, they can blow the crap out
    • Look back a couple centuries and see how many people would say that the average person was too dumb to learn how to read or write. I don't know about you, but I don't know anyone who can't read or write.

      They'll just have to become telemarketers for all the projects and services that the robots do. Hum, I'm on the Missouri No Call list. [mo.gov]

      I'm sure they will figure out something.

    • Will the USA become a place where the only jobs needed will be thought based.

      Unfortunately, no. Don't say it like it's a bad thing. Just because someone can't do calculus doesn't mean he/she cannot design an aesthetic sofa or come up with a new pattern for jeans or something. As we are liberated from manual and repetitive tasks, we are given the gift of donating our talents to aesthetics and other intellectual and artistic pursuits. And with the coming age of just-in-time manufacturing, there should

      • As we are liberated from manual and repetitive tasks, we are given the gift of donating our talents to aesthetics and other intellectual and artistic pursuits

        Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I get sick of the "oh, what will we do when our hands are idle" whine around here when the subject of robots comes up.
        People, work is something you do so you can live well. Period. It shouldn't be the entire point of life itself. If I became independently wealthy tomorrow, the office would never see me again: I'd pro

        • This is the same (and in my eyes right) argument that's been made about nanomanufacturing for a long time.

          The moment that everything can be reproduced for merely the cost of it's raw materials, the individuality of an object will make it worth something.

          When a nanomanufacturing engine can churn out a flawless dining room table set in 5 minutes, suddenly a handmade dining room table will be a priceless treasure. Then suddenly having (Napolean Dynomite voice) "skills" will be more important than having mon
    • "Not everyone can pass Chemistry 101"

      I see it this way, as soon as we are able to create AI that even comes close to having the same intelligence as the least bright minded of humanity, humanity will need to make some profoundly serious decisions on where to go there on out because AI will have reached an exponential growth rate.

      Even the people you think are truly dumb are capable of a level of thought that our technology is simply not capable of mimicking. If you were to combine this ability to be concio
    • "Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house" - Robert A. Heinlein
    • >>I see so many problems here. What will people >>do for a living??

      Build robots of course
    • We only work for a living because work has to be done! If we could automate these processes then we could do more IMPORTANT things like raising families and furthering intellectual discourse. Star Trek anyone?

      OT: That is the inherent flaw of the Communist Manifesto- Marx and Engels could not have forseen the rise of technology. When there is no more work to be done there will be no more chains for the proletarians to lose, nor will there be any more proletarians. For more information read Banks' The Cultur [wikipedia.org]
  • I can't imagine the submitter did not intentionally choose examples of robots roaming about with blades and lots of power. The safety issues are tremendous. I don't mind when some new OS program dives on my laptop, but I'd rather not have a couple tons of snow-plow do so in my neighborhood.

    Then again-- the platform may be open, but not everybody can afford that kind of hardware. Snowplows anyway-- lawn mowers are a whole different matter. How many geeks will be trying to get just a little more mileage

    • Re:Well (Score:3, Interesting)

      by John Seminal ( 698722 )
      How many geeks will be trying to get just a little more mileage out of that old 286 and end up killing the neighbor's cat?

      You would be very suprised at the power of a 286. It could easily run a robot. And if you have the math co-processor, you could probably program some AI. Now the CGA or EGA monitors sucked, and the sound sucked. But at its very basic level, it is more powerful that you think.

      I bet you could control multiple motors with a 286. Simple on/off commands for moving N/E/S/W.

      • That's my point. I mean-- I can just imagine the swath of destruction I'd be responsible for if my mindstorm creations were made out of something other than legos and allowed to roam outdoors.

        I picture the one that was supposed to push the loose bricks outside the black lines, without leaving the lines itself. Now- as a real snow plow, well I guess I'd have had to work the defense in a fight to get life as opposed to the death penalty.
    • The safety issues are tremendous. I don't mind when some new OS program dives on my laptop, but I'd rather not have a couple tons of snow-plow do so in my neighborhood.

      as opposed to the software that's controlling modern jet-liners, automobiles, and mass-transit systems?

  • ...for the next major version. I don't mind skid-steer, but a heavy duty, chain driven four wheeler without even a rudimentary rack-pinion steering system? Meh. Too easy for the cat to dodge...

  • Penguicon? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Uh, that would be a convention for developers of Pen-based GUIs, I assume?

  • No... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by feelyoda ( 622366 ) on Monday April 25, 2005 @07:13PM (#12342329) Homepage
    "Will we see fleets of ORPP robots plowing our streets and mowing our lawns in the future?"

    No, you won't.

    Unless you manage to provide the $5K+ (each) sensors needed to detect all exceptional cases, you have any breakthroughs.

    Detecting a pedestrian in the street with 99.999% reliability needed is HARD. Not mowing over a golf club in you back yard is HARD. Not falling over or running into things is HARD.

    As soon as people realize that autonomous hardware needs to react in real time to a dynamic, complex real world, the efforts to compare PCs to robots will stop.

    Think about it this way: humans use sensors that are hundreds of times higher resolution, and processors that are thousands of times faster. What makes you think you can do it on the cheap?. And don't start talking about ants or bees! WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU SAW ANYTHING BUT A HUMAN DRIVE A CAR IN ALL CONDITIONS?

    Open standards are fine, but don't believe the exponential growth potential for anything but software.
    • When's the last time you saw a human drive a car in all conditions? Or drive a car well in the same daily condition? You must not live in an area with heavy traffic.
      • "When's the last time you saw a human drive a car in all conditions? Or drive a car well in the same daily condition? You must not live in an area with heavy traffic."

        Think about the throughput. It only seems like driving in traffic is more dangerous because there are so many more cars, and pretty much proportionally more accidents. Driving in worse conditions is a bigger cause of accidents, in my understanding. Someone could reply with some numbers.
      • I have, and it was an eye opening experience. I remember the times in NJ, driving bumper to bumper in all six lanes (one way), in dreary drizzle, at 55mph. I would come over a hill and realize just how many of us there were, and just how dangerous the whole thing looked. Any one of us hitting our brakes wrong, or a tire going out, or some little thing and the pile up would have been big. But that didn't happen. The thousands and thousands of us managed to do what look like a hard task without a single

    • Re:No... (Score:1, Interesting)

      by theborg1of4 ( 863815 )
      Good points. It's incredibly hard to make truly self-guiding vehicles, especially land-based ones where you have far more obstacles to avoid than air or sea. It's a combination of sensor input and AI.

      To expand on this: read up on the DARPA Grand Challenge. The goal is to design and build a completely autonomous vehicle capable of navigating various kinds of terrain and obstables over long distances, using only a set of waypoint coordinates given to each team two hours prior to the competition. DARPA ho
      • Yah, I know a few groups doing the grand challenge, most from CMU, who will likely win this year.

        Open standards will do little in that field, where your average Joe doesn't have $50K+ to drop on everything needed. This is my first point about the cost of semi-adequate sensors.

        I'm pretty certain the grand challenge this year will mark a turning point in robotics, when a fairly complicated task was mastered.

        I look forward to an ASIMO butler taking my dirty dishes away without breaking them, and a robotic p
        • >> and a robotic paintball teammate

          Be careful what you wish for... else we'll have these "paintball teammates" in a blink of an eye: pic [imdb.com]
          They'll infiltrate earth and become governors of themselves (pun intended :)
      • darpa grand challenge is kind of an extreme case for a few reasons... not only is it a fairly tough AI problem, there are some incredible engineering challenges as well.

        - its not clear that even a human driver would be able to do the course in the given amount of time. this is *difficult* off road driving, even for a professional off-road racer. the probability of getting stuck or breaking an axel or other mechanical failure is non-trivial.

        - driving off road makes the sensor reading problem about 100 t
    • Exactly...

      Sensors and processing of that data in hardware need to come a long ways before will will see usefull robots. We really need high resoultion lazer based scanning and ccd sensors that are not designed for human viewing to come down in cost 1000x. You also need something to process the data from these sensors, todays general purpose PC's would suck down too much current for a mobile robot todo the nessary data analias. You would need dedicated processing built right into the CCD sensors. Basicly y
      • There are some sensors that cat get dense scans in 3D, but they are by no means cheap. I've also seen some (not open) research systems that recover amazingly detailed 3D world models from stereo. Unfortunately, it's still not easy to do anything: Once you overcome the sensing problem you still have lots of spatial reasoning problems. This gets even more fun outdoors where even the 3D data doesn't tell the whole story: A rock and a clump of grass can have similar 3D shapes, but for driving purposes they a
    • >Open standards are fine, but don't believe the
      > exponential growth potential for anything but >software.

      There's a saying about robots:
      "Robots are mostly software."
    • No doubt this is advanced technology, but maybe the technology itself is not where invention is most beneficial at this point. I believe robotics is a highly under-applied technology.

      For instance, the most useful robotic technology I have owned so far is a self-cleaning litter box. It consists of a simple motion detector and timer. However, though these technologies have existed for atleast 50 years, it has only relatively recently made it to market where the consumer can benefit.

      I believe this project is
    • KITT. Knight Industries Two Thousand. ... ...What?
    • They make good coffee tables [elsie.org.uk] though.

  • There are others (Score:3, Informative)

    by Wayne Gramlich ( 449352 ) on Monday April 25, 2005 @07:13PM (#12342335) Homepage

    Here's one:

    http://oap.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]

    Here's another (warning only 128 kbps uplink):

    It sure would be nice if people who start these projects would shoot a message off to the comp.robotics.misc news group to try and minimize overlap. The current state of affairs is that there are plenty of projects and very little of the hardware from the projects is interoperable.

    -Wayne

    Disclaimer: The last URL is mine and I started it back in 1998.

  • Other tools (Score:3, Informative)

    by pooya ( 878915 ) on Monday April 25, 2005 @07:14PM (#12342341) Homepage
    Hmm, That is not the first one, there are lots of other tools around, the most famous one Player/Stage [sourceforge.net] has a well developed architecture and many universities, companies and people around the world are using that.
  • if it will work on this [roboteq.com]
  • ...on your robotic hedge clipper!
  • I believe that this is the single greatest thing to happen to robotics. This will completely revolutionize the way we live.

    (I am just saying that so if it really does happen, I can tell everyone "I told you so")
  • Yah, you know me.

  • More Pictures and Movies! (Score:3, Informative)

    by william_lorenz ( 703263 ) on Monday April 25, 2005 @08:25PM (#12342945) Homepage
    I was at Penguicon 3.0 and have pictures and movies of it here [express.org], here [express.org], here [express.org], and here [express.org]!

  • NASA and Universities are trying...sort of. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    In another life I worked at JPL in robotics and still keep in touch with friends there. They have been struggling for many years to open source much of the robotics software both inside NASA and through all the contract money they send out to universities. Of course the beauracrats are making things difficult. Last I heard there was trouble due to the ban on export of certain technologies and part of it is NASA and University IP lawyers worried about loosing control of that one golden nuggest that might
  • Will we see fleets of ORPP robots plowing our streets and mowing our lawns in the future?

    No.

  • Some of the more interesting areas for robotics involve really small clients. When you are dealing with these small clients, weight and power consumption become major issues in ways they just aren't in the PC world. I would be interested in seeing a forth-based implementation of the client for this robotics platform-or at least use of one of the smaller embedded versions of Linux.
  • Well, if it's as easy as homegrowing a PC -- then lawnmowing robots under ORPP will be as common as Linux on home computers! The replacement of human workers with robots will approach the pace of the replacement of Windows PCs on the corporate desktop with Linux boxes!

    Now is the time to prepare for this imminent threat to factory workers worldwide. Oh, wait...

  • If you're interested in a completely open-source robotics platform (where everything is open, including schematics, the firmware, the user libraries, *everything*), visit www.orcboard.org [orcboard.org]. There's no commercial manufacturer, but there's a community group-ordering effort.

    The OrcBoard is used in the MASLab robotics competititon [mit.edu] at MIT, and in MIT's cornerstone robotics class. Most folks use the OrcBoard with a linux laptop or embedded PC.

    The OrcBoard is just the controller for a robot, not a robot itself, a
  • From what I have seen of their webpage, it does not look like this platform is currently intended for autonomous control just remote. I still think this is a great idea and I have thought about doing something similar to this but on the electronics side. (designing cheap modular microcontrollers) You run into many cost situations when dealing with autonomous robots (sensors and motors) One problem that I have run across in my brainstorming is spatial resolution, if you are going to have a robot that is mo
    • well some really cheap sensor ideas shared with me by the YAAARC [yaaarc.org] guys at the con was a laserpoint fixed in relation to a cheap webcam. the lower the dot the closer the object. survey quality GPS is out there and commercially available. it can get resolutions in feet and inches. it is rather pricy for a user but ORPP is for consultants.

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