Kopernikus
an experimental prototyping platform to test and evaluate the vision of home robotics
The vision of home robotics is ubiquitous. As a transdisciplinary team of designers, technologists and researchers, we were looking for a way to prototype the concepts we've been working on.
The question becomes: how do you design AI? How can we build behavioural interfaces? One common example is robot navigation.
We want future robots to navigate through our apartments savely, in a manner that is understandable and predictable for humans. We want them to deal gracefully with unexpected obstacles and be efficient and save.
One of our key interests is Heuristic Problem Solving, which uses concepts from cognitive science to implement a decision process similar to that of humans (You can read up on HPS here, a Paper by our team member Alexandra Kirsch). Our goal is to use HPS as a general, cognitively inspired decision-making framework and use Kopernikus as a use case and testing environment to gain insights through practical experiences.
Kopernikus is a small robot, that will cost less than EUR1000 to build. If you put it together, you will have something like a remote control car, equipped with a quad core computer, a stereo camera, audio input and output and a video projector.
Kopernikus is an open-source software-hardware prototyping platform. You'll be able to use it as a basic setup and build your personal project on top.
We've built Kopernikus for ourselves, as a platform to experiment with AI technologies, out of low priced electronic components with accessible tools, designed to be modified easily.
To enable more people to experiment with low cost robotics, we've decided to open source our hardware plans and software.
Please note that this is an early stage of development. We're not selling a product, but share our design and progress.
We've made a shopping list with everything you'll need to buy.
You can download all our CAD models for 3D printing and laser cut/CNC milling.
We have a git to look at our code.
Our ambition is to enable creative minds from any discipline to contribute towards shaping the future of robotics.
visit www.kopernikus.io
A Project by the Intuity Media Lab
Team: Steffen Süpple, Ludwig Rensch, Max Hans, Alexandra Kirsch
also visit www.aaiirr.net