(T) Imagine that you can buy a Robot for $249 and that you can program it to help you with your Vietnamese or French cuisine or packing your suitcase the way you want it: exotic vacations or short business trip! I guess I am not the only one to dream about it! But maybe that future is not too far away?

I met a Russian start-up R.Bot at an Android Developer Conference which is proposing a robot, manufactured in China, running the Android O/S, for a few hundred dollars. The robot can be programmed to accommodate specifics needs using an SDK, shall I say RDK (Robot Development Kit). The robot is operated using an Android smartphone or tablet.

The Open Source Robotics Foundation (OSRF) started ROS (Robot Operating System) which aims to provide a Robot O/S, Robot drivers, and state-of-the-art Robot algorithms for any developer robotics project. And it is all open source! OSRF and ROS have their roots into Stanford Artificial Lab.

It is still too soon to say, but definitely having open source robot O/S, or at least drivers and RDK available should definitely accelerate the creation of a new generation of robots that could make them present in our homes instead of keeping them in Hollywood movies.

Note: The picture above is a Robot from R.Bot.

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