credit: LinuxRobots.org
LinuxDevices.com has a posting about a newly launched website by one of its members that combines two of my favorite things: Linux and robots. The website, LinuxRobots.org, was created by Michael Shiloh, an electrical engineer, Linux buff, and robot builder for Survival Research Laboratories (SRL), the performance art group whose spectacularly noisy and destructive robot battles were the precursor to modern robot competitions like Robot Wars and BattleBots. Besides providing an online meeting place for Linux robot enthusiasts, Shiloh has built a small robot and connected it to his web server allowing anyone to SSH in, program it, and view their results via a webcam feed at the site.
The robot is built around a 600 MHz Via mini-ITX board that runs Gentoo Linux. It has two motors that allow for independent control of direction and speed, a forward-pointing distance measuring sensor, and 4 light sensors. The onboard computer contains pre-written programs as well as editors and a compiler for modifying the existing programs or starting new ones from scratch.
Shiloh invites users to log into the robot using SSH, and in his words, “…make it do something. Impress me, scare my dog, have fun!”
This is definitely a website worth keeping an eye on.