Related papers: OpenBot: Turning Smartphones into Robots
Robotic surgery and novel surgical instrumentation present great potentials towards safer, more accurate and consistent minimally invasive surgery. However, their adoption is dependent to the access to training facilities and extensive…
Open-source mobile manipulators have reached $660 (XLeRobot) but every sub-$1,000 platform shares three limitations: a fixed-height workspace, reactive-only control, and no protection against the stall-induced burn-out that destroys cheap…
The Michigan Robotics MBot is a low-cost mobile robot platform that has been used to train over 1,400 students in autonomous navigation since 2014 at the University of Michigan and our collaborating colleges. The MBot platform was designed…
A key factor in the economic efficiency of satellites is their availability in orbit. Replacing standardized building blocks, such as empty fuel tanks or outdated electronic modules, could greatly extend the satellites' lifetime. This,…
The use of mobile robots has inevitably increased in recent years. The increase in the companies that produce products in this field, the popularity of the studies in the robotic field and the technological competence to serve many…
A sensor is a device that converts a physical parameter or an environmental characteristic (e.g., temperature, distance, speed, etc.) into a signal that can be digitally measured and processed to perform specific tasks. Mobile robots need…
Intelligent systems are increasingly part of our everyday lives and have been integrated seamlessly to the point where it is difficult to imagine a world without them. Physical manifestations of those systems on the other hand, in the form…
Building robots is an engaging activity that provides opportunities for hands-on learning. However, traditional robot-building kits are usually costly with limited functionality due to material and technology constraints. To improve the…
Experiments using large numbers of miniature swarm robots are desirable to teach, study, and test multi-robot and swarm intelligence algorithms and their applications. To realize the full potential of a swarm robot, it should be capable of…
We introduce shape-changing swarm robots. A swarm of self-transformable robots can both individually and collectively change their configuration to display information, actuate objects, act as tangible controllers, visualize data, and…
This paper introduces Q8bot, an open-source, miniature quadruped designed for robotics research and education. We present the robot's novel zero-wire design methodology, which leads to its superior form factor, robustness, replicability,…
The majority of smartphones either run iOS or Android operating systems. This has created two distinct ecosystems largely controlled by Apple and Google - they dictate which applications can run, how they run, and what kind of phone…
Developing real robotic systems requires a tight integration of mechanics, electronics and software. Most of the times, existing robotic platforms are either closed or expensive or both, and in-house solutions are costly to develop and…
Traditional rigid underwater vehicles pose risks to delicate marine ecosystems due to high-speed propellers and rigid hulls. This paper presents BactoBot, a low-cost, soft underwater robot designed for safe and gentle marine exploration.…
Autonomous underwater robots typically require higher cost and time for demonstrations compared to other domains due to the complexity of the environment. Due to the limited capacity and payload flexibility, it is challenging to find…
The future robots are expected to work in a shared physical space with humans [1], however, the presence of humans leads to a dynamic environment that is challenging for mobile robots to navigate. The path planning algorithms designed to…
Many organisms, including various species of spiders and caterpillars, change their shape to switch gaits and adapt to different environments. Recent technological advances, ranging from stretchable circuits to highly deformable soft…
Validation of robotics theory on real-world hardware platforms is important to prove the practical feasibility of algorithms. This paper discusses some of the lessons learned while adapting the EvoBot, a low-cost robotics platform that we…
OpenPodcar is a low-cost, open source hardware and software, autonomous vehicle research platform based on an off-the-shelf, hard-canopy, mobility scooter donor vehicle. Hardware and software build instructions are provided to convert the…
In this paper we introduce a novel approach that enables users to interact with a mobile robot in a natural manner. The proposed interaction system does not require any specific infrastructure or device, but relies on commonly utilized…