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Evolution Leads the Personal Robotics Revolution

Ultrabot: Made from several hardware kits and some additional parts.

While each year personal robotics comes closer and closer to becoming an everyday part of our lives this month it may have taken a giant leap.

Evolution Robotics unveiled its Open Software Platform for the personal robotics industry. This comprehensive toolset promises to allow developers and enthusiasts to rapidly design and build custom robots.

"We have built, from the ground up, the first commercially viable robotics software platform that is portable, modular, hardware-independent, and extensible, enabling professionals in a wide range of industries to create customized personal robot products for various hardware designs and operating systems," said Bernard Louvat, President and COO of Evolution Robotics. "Having pulled together the best blend of academic and commercial engineering expertise, we will grow the new personal robotics industry much the way Windows took the PC industry by storm."

Almost like a super advanced Lego Mindstorms kit, the platform comes with everything you need to develop huge variety of personal robots. This includes, proprietary software architecture, core software modules, rich developer tools and a hardware kit.

Hardware kit *laptop not included

While the average consumer might not be in awe of the hardware kit, its a dream for many robot enthusiasts and a great starting point for most commercial developers. It comes complete with robot control module, camera, numerous sensors, motors and a modular aluminum building system. No soldering required!

The heart or rather brain of the Evolution's offering is its open software platform. It enables developers to seamlessly integrate software, hardware, and advanced applications to program robots that come alive, act autonomously and complete complex tasks. Some of the core software modules include vision, personality, speech, behavior, obstacle avoidance, and target following.

The software platform will be available for Linux in March. A Windows version is planned to be released in the near future. It requires a Pentium 450 MHz or faster laptop computer to run the software platform and interface with the hardware.

Click here for more information on Evolution Robotics and its products

Published: 02/28/02
Story by: Brent Mitchell
OnRobo.com Editor