Robohub.org
Recent breakthroughs enabling consumer and commercial robotics
… The Kinect phenomena highlights the market for low-cost sensors and also the ingenuity of the world of roboticists and hackers taking advantage of these breakthroughs.
… iRobot’s AVA – an inexpensive mobile platform connected to a two-way vision tablet – is going to help and is partnering into healthcare and other fields with it’s AVA robot. Other vendors (Vgo, Luna, BiliBot, etc.) also making inroads with low-cost telepresence robots.
… The use of series elastic actuators changes the whole approach to manufacturing robots. Besides being cheaper, robots are able to safely interact with people thereby ridding the necessity for a “cage.”
… Open sourcing and app store concepts (e.g.: RoboEarth) are taking hold in the robotics world as Apple has pioneered and others are following in the computer and communications world.
