TurtleBot and Entrepreneurial Ideas
While at drop.io, I acquired an iRobot Create and a netbook to put together a simple telepresence robot. Here’s the original post (with bad links, just for reference). It was a fun experiment and I actually published the code out on github (here). You could use any OSC, hardware or software controller, or a regular telnet prompt to control movement.
At any rate, when drop.io was acquired, I was searching for the next thing to do. With the advice of some of my techy friends, they said I should try to build up and sell an “SDK” and kit for building a small telepresence robot, consisting of an iRobot Create and a netbook. At the time I thought it would be interesting, but would require capital up front to purchase inventory and I didn’t think it would eventually make much profit. But it would be fun.
Sometimes life gets in the way and you make up your own excuses on why you shouldn’t do things. It’s silly, but it’s a part of being human. As an entrepreneur, you have to ignore those excuses and push forward fast. Iterate, push, and go for the glory.
In this case, I caved to my pressures and silly excuses and decided to pursue other interests…
Fast foward to today and I saw a press release how an amazing company, Willow Garage, is going to sell kits for small robot platforms. And guess what, it has an iRobot Create and a netbook. With an addition of a Kinect device, you have TurtleBot, an incredibly powerful and affordable robotics system.
I missed the boat.
That’s part of being an entrepreneur. You have to quickly pick up on your good ideas and move forward. Of course I could still pursue the same route, but I actually was going to bundle ROS and a Kinect anyway, which is exactly the TurtleBot.
Good luck to those guys, as it’s a great idea and I’m glad that someone else was thinking in the same direction at the same time, which is also a part of being an entrepreneur; validation.
UPDATE
Found another company doing the same thing: bilibot
Cool stuff!
Never Trust Robots
So there’s a small hardware project I’m playing with for drop.io. A telepresence robot to help me throughout my day while I work from my home office, considering I’m 1,584 miles from HQ.
Short story, long… it’s a netbook on top of a iRobot Create platform.
At any rate, what does this have to do with Jolicloud? It’s the OS that’s running on the netbook! I’m using that as a platform. It’s very netbook friendly and behaves kind of like an iPhone, where you have a simple interface where you can “add apps” and they are part of your “in your face” UI experience.
Of course, with early adopting, there’s always bugs… and this one is no exception. There are lots of really annoying issues with Jolicloud right now, but I’m sure they’ll get taken care of. Lots of password prompts and system nuances, that are results of retrofitting their UI on top of the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution.
Either way, give it a try… also check out Moblin, which is another netbook focused Linux distribution.
As president, I believe that robotics can inspire young people to pursue science and engineering. And I also want to keep an eye on those robots in case they try anything.
3D Printing with Makerbot
The latest gadget that I’ve been lusting over is the MakerBot…
This thing is bad-ass… When there’s all of this exciting stuff happening with large sets of data and crazy device interactions on the internet, there’s a home-grown movement to bring 3D printing and replication to the home front.
Enter the MakerBot. A realtively cheap ($750) DYI open source 3D printer. The Cupcake CNC is the platform in which cheap hardware, combined with hackable electronics and open source software, allow the average hacker to bring a 3D printer system to their home. Typically large scale, industrial 3D printers are $10,000 to $25,000… This is a fantastic start!
There are some limitations. They only extrude certain materials (plastic and frosting) and their build platform can only support 100mm x 100mm x 130mm, which is slightly smaller than a rubix cube. But it’s a start.
Beyond printing in 3D for fun and profit… are more exciting concepts. Distributed manufacturing comes to your home. The MakerBot needed a way to get more parts (which they print from the same machine) ready for another batch of machines. So what did they do? They asked the people who have already bought the machine if they would produce parts with monetary return on each part made.
Now THAT’S impressive. It’ll be exciting
Oh and btw, I have procured funding for a machine to be purchased in October, with a probably ship date in November… I’m not quite sure if I can really produce anything with it, but I have some time to start creating some models and ideas of what to print!
I'm a Ruby developer that loves to play with science, math, and gadgets. Previously, I was part of a startup called drop.io, acquired by Facebook. I live in Fort Worth, TX with my wife, 2 dogs, and baby boy. I'm a foodie, a gamer, and a self proclaimed scientist.
