The Bilibot Project with Garratt Gallagher

Link to audio file (24:12)

In today’s episode we talk about a new generation of affordable robots with the Bilibot project and its leader Garratt Gallagher from MIT.

Garratt Gallagher

Garratt Gallagher joined MIT in 2009 as a research engineer after a Masters of Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University. During his day job, he works with the PR2 robots from Willow Garage. On the side however, Gallagher has been developing the Bilibot, a cheap hobbyist/research robot that merges the capabilities of ROS, iRobot’s iCreate, the Kinect and a robust manipulator. The end result is an excellent platform with state-of-the-art sensing technology that has the potential to achieve a variety of service tasks, such as picking up your room or fetching a beer from the fridge.

To bring the Bilibot project to the next level, Gallagher partnered-up with two master students in Operations Management at MIT. The company they recently founded is now selling Bilibots for 1200$ with a cash return of $350 if you make a video of the Bilibot doing something cool, you share the code on ROS and collaborate with other developers. With this step, his team hopes to build a user community excited about the robot and prepare for their next big step, a robot app store.

Links:

• Download mp3 (15.1 MB)
• Subscribe to Robots using iTunes
• Subscribe to Robots using RSS
• Bilibot Project homepage
• Garratt Gallagher’s homepage

Podcast team The ROBOTS Podcast brings you the latest news and views in robotics through its bi-weekly interviews with leaders in the field.

Podcast team The ROBOTS Podcast brings you the latest news and views in robotics through its bi-weekly interviews with leaders in the field.