“‘Have you ever dreamed of building your own Linux-based droid
[that could] roam around your home autonomously, intelligently
obeying your commands?’ asks Dafydd Walters. ‘You may now be able
to finally fulfill your dream.’ Walters founded and leads the Open
Automaton Project (OAP), which aims to help enthusiasts assemble an
intelligent mobile robot with stereo vision and state-of-the-art PC
mainboard technology–for about the cost of a good PC.“Unlike the RETF and OROCOS projects, which focus on devising
open standards for robot hardware-software interfaces, OAP is all
about implementation. OAP’s objective is to create a reference
design that bridges the gap between sophisticated robots used by
researchers and the ‘small, rug-roving’ critters typically
assembled by hobbyists…”