The Open Source Robotics program or OSbot would be the chief robotics development portion of the Open Source Everything Project. Likely accumulating a vast assortment of robot designs ranging from hobbyist recreational and ‘fighting’ robots to more practical household, lab, and industrial robots, the two most important design families in the context of TMP would be three simple but powerful robotics platforms called VersaBot-Alpha , Inchworm-Alpha, and RoboTruck-Alpha.
VersaBot-Alpha would be the precursor to the VersaBot robotics platform pursued by Aquarius settlements. It is a multi-purpose evolvable robotics platform that would start with a very simple and humble form factor largely identical to that of today’s Rhoomba line of robots and many similar cylindrical or ‘hockey puck’ robots except that its simple structure is designed to ‘stack’ allowing the attachment of different specialized modules that allow it to evolve into a vast assortment of forms, ultimately culminating in anthropomorphic robots employing a dynamic balance two-wheel drive base.
Inchworm-Alpha would be the precursor to the Inchworm telerobots employed on MUOL facilities and later the standard external robot design for most of the Asgard phase. Consisting of a single multi-jointed robotic arm with modular end effectors and sensor heads at either end, it would optionally –and most likely initially– use a form of the VersaBot modules as ‘feet’; one serving as a tool carrier and the other an ‘anchor’ module with power and deployable radial stabilizer legs. It would also be used in a fixed mount form as a common actuator for VersaBots.
RoboTruck-Alpha would be the precursor to the RoboTruck platform developed as a telerobotics settlement and exploration robot used in the Avalon phase of lunar and planetary settlement. With a simple space frame chassis sporting four or more wheel/motors drive units on articulated suspension legs, it would be intended chiefly as a modest sized but tough duty all-terrain utility telerobot that would be used in earth moving and construction applications as well as Earth-science activities and perhaps even in farming and recreation. It would sometimes be employed as a base drive platform for both VersaBot and Inchworm systems.
Though there would likely be much overlap in use, VersaBot-Alpha would tend to be focused largely on autonomous robot applications while Inchworm-Alpha and RoboTruck-Alpha would be focused on telerobotic and pre-programmed process robotics. We will be discussing the various possible forms of these robots in more detail in the Aquarius, Asgard, and Avalon sections of the wiki. In these early forms, the three robots are intended to provide simple but very flexible platforms with which hobbyists and serious robotics researchers alike can build upon each other’s work and economically produce machines with actual practical uses and commercial potential.
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Peer Topics[]
- Utilimobile Project
- Utilihab Project
- Open Energy Project
- Open Computer Project
- Open Space Project
- Open Fabber Project
- FIY - Fab-It-Yourself Series
- Enclosure Profiles