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]