Stanford delivers Open Source Humanoid Robots
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In the open source community, there are several efforts to develop robots that look and/or act like humans, performing interesting and useful tasks. They're not C3PO at this stage of their development, but they show tremendous promise, especially if more open source contributions are made to the projects.
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Willow Garage is an open source robotics project that originated at Stanford University. Robots being developed with the project run ROS (Robot Operating System) software.
PR2 is the mobile hardware design for Willow Garage robots, featuring stereo and laser sensors. It's shown at left. Stanford hosts a series of highly entertaining and interesting videos showing PR2 robots performing tasks such as tidying up a room and retrieving beer from a refrigerator.
Senior citizens are a big part of the target audience that Willow Garage is aiming for. "All industrialized countries are facing aging populations that require assistance and care to remain independent into old age. By 2020 close to 20 percent of the US population will be over 65," the project leaders say. "These numbers are even higher in Western European and Asian countries." Willow Garage is aiming to produce several types of assistive robots.
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