Effective Robot Home Applications for Hobbyists

The evolution of robotic seems in many ways to mirror the evolution of the computer. Today robots can be found in many businesses and practically every major research institutions. However, the promise of the common robot envisioned by many prognosticators and authors to exist in the homes and lives of the average person has yet to be fully realized in the same way the personal computer has come to be as ubiquitous as the refrigerator. As such we believe that the next logical step in the evolution of robotic is to place robots in hand of hobbyists. Additionally, these robots must be powerful and flexible enough to spur this next step. It has thus designed a powerful, durable yet relatively low cost robot that relies almost exclusively on off the shelf parts.

While the usage of off the shelf parts and an open source design principle makes the assembly of the hardware components easier, it is also necessary that software implementation be easy to understand, as well as effective enough that the hobbyists can create robotic applications that are useful in the home. This is analogues to computer programmers writing simple programs to balance their checkbook in the early days of home computing. While such application may not have been efficient for their time, it created the foundation for idealistic development that would lead to the spreadsheet and the useful home applications that came later. As such, we are developing a comprehensive open source toolkit based upon biological principles to bring powerful software applications to the end user hobbyist to experiment with in the hopes of creating highly useful home and real world applications.