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Hykim is a cutting edge multi-purpose robot bear that is built on an open development platform (both hardware and software). It has been applied as a soccer player, and is currently being further developed to apply to real world human rescue missions!
Project Details Name of project: Hykim - the 21DOF Robot Bear Brief overview: Hykim is a Robot Bear originally designed in response to RoboCup's call for a Standard Robotic Platform (information on the proposals (July 2007) can be viewed at http://tribotix.com/Products/RoboCup Tender/Intro.htm). The design philosophy used to produce Hykim was that Hykim would be an Open Development Platform, all necessary documentation is available to anyone along with the software. Hykim is a project in its early stages. The hardware is complete, and the software is currently in development, so if you are interested in robotics, get in touch with the team. The Robot Bear functionally can move around on all four legs, on two legs, can record video images and sound through the web cam. It has 5-axis IMU (inertial measurement unit) and accelerometer in the head and chest to help it figure out where it is and where it is moving to. This can be useful for general robotics (such as the soccer competition) but also for real life applications like rescue missions, which Hykim is also being designed for. Standards used: Ethernet, 802.11g, Serial interface, Posix OSS technologies used: On the robot: eLinux (built from Debian) is used on the AMD geode microcontroller (the same as in the OLPC project) to controller all the elements of the robot. Python and c are used along with gcc, Apache (for viewing web images through a web browser) and the Debian webcam application for capturing imaging. They are controlled remotely via a wireless network, and can be programmed dynamically.
Methodologies: The project is attempting to build a community around the project, which includes the University of Newcastle, UTS and the The Hamilton Institute (Ireland).
OSS projects contributed to: No. They are mainly using the Open Source software in a simple way and the code written specifically for this project is made available on the website.
Implementors (internal, external): The three universities mentioned above and Tribotix all collaborate together (led by Tribotix), with a growing external collaborator community.
Conclusions Rationale of Open Source technologies used: Rationale of Open Source technologies used: One of the main things we try to achieve is to make our projects expandable, user friendly and adaptable. You don't want people to be bound by the hardware, software or project vision when trying to implement our creations in new and innovative ways. Also, by making it able to be broken down into components (generally generic hardware, open source software) it can easily be fixed or modified at a component level. So when a motor breaks, or software bug is found, users can actually replace or choose to work with Tribotix to fix and improve it. The Open Source development model makes collaborative development between organisations and individuals easier for us. It gives people access to be able to learn what is going on at a software level, and this is also applied at a hardware level for the same reason. It gets rid of the magic and confusion. Contact Details Date of case study: 2006 - ongoing
State/s: NSW
Name of institute: Partnership between Tribotix and the University of Newcastle with collaboration from UTS and the The Hamilton Institute (Ireland) Contact person: Peter Turner
Contact details: Peter dot Turner at tribotix dot com URLs (project and institute): Details of the project are available at http://tribotix.com/
http://tribotix.info/wiki
http://livesite.newcastle.edu.au/cdsc/Home.page
http://www.robots.newcastle.edu.au/robocup.html The team can be visited at #tribotix on the freenode IRC network. |
