ROP, Robotic Open Platform University Eindhoven
December 2012. Worldwide, many universities and companies are developing robots. But they usually do this independently, causes slow developments, expensive robots and products of various groups remain poorly coordinated. Therefor TU Eindhoven is starting the Robotic Open Platform (ROP), an open source system for robot hardware. This system has a large library with plug and play designs which robot makers worldwide can use or add to improve knowlegde.
The major goal of ROP
For example the development of care robots can accelerate en make them much cheaper. The University of Eindhoven itself represents the entire blueprint of care available Amigo robot, and the known TU soccer robots. The heart of Robotic Open Platform consists of a wiki, where all participants can open up their designs to copy or improve. It is intended that all elements in the Wiki literally cause seamless integration, through standardization.
ROP focuses on home robots, so robots that do housework and supportive care. "We put all drawings, diagrams and descriptions necessary for our online Amigo robot to build. The idea is that to allow other research groups to make the robot with relatively little money. If you want to buy a robot, nowdays takes three to four tons. In a few years we want you to built the successor of our Amigo can for thousands of pounds.
The Robotic Open Platform
ROP is the hardware equivalent of the existing open source software for robot system, ROS (Robot Operating System). This started in 2007 in the U.S., and many robot developers have joined this initiative. The launch of ROP takes place at the European Robotics Week 2011