Cool build-it-yourself robot kits from CMU. Looks like they are intended mostly for telepresence (as opposed to Combots), but would serve fine for a beer fetcher or hockeybot, and are reasonably priced: TeRK Telepresence Robot Recipes. (And Qwerkbot, better tidy up with some zip ties before MomBot catches you: “Junior, you’re not going out with your wires looking like that. You’ll snag your power cable and then you’ll be in trouble!”)

For brains, they use the QWERK board from Charmed Labs, a special Linux ARM9 board with built-in motor drivers, servo outputs, webcam input, and wifi support. Though the $330 pricetag is substantially more than comparable single-board computers without the motor/servo support, it’s not far from the perfect mix of features for a dedicated bot brain, and there’s a lot to be said for not having to do the glue logic yourself.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 22nd, 2006 at 8:31 am and is filed under Neat Stuff, RoboToys, Shop Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.