• Open source robots in homes by, like, next week

    John Biggs

    Biggs is the East Coast Editor of TechCrunch. Biggs has written for the New York Times, InSync, USA Weekend, Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, Money and a number of other outlets on technology and wristwatches. He is the former editor-in-chief of Gizmodo.com and lives in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. You can Tweet him here and G+ him here. Email him directly at... → Learn More

    Sunday, March 16th, 2008

    willowgaragerobot1.jpg

    Willow Garage makes “open source” robots and is hoping their work, in conjunction with some Cali universities, will soon appear in homes around the world. Their robots, called the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Robot Project (STAIR), have a standard operating system and all of the mechanics and software is open source, meaning you can modify your STAIR robot as you see fit.

    Now that I’m thinking of it, wasn’t there supposed to be a little black robot we were all supposed to have in our homes by like 1985? Remember what I’m talking about? There were plans in Popular Science I think and you could build it and have it bring you drinks. Oh well. As we see in this photo, the STAIR robot had two hands with appendages that seem to be studded for our pleasure, so screw getting drinks.

    Robotics start-up Willow Garage believes open source OS will soon put robots in our homes [VentureBeat]

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