The robotic technology has been in use for some tome now in industry but the concept of personal robots was not commercialized. If at all there were some prototypes they were all with the elite research institutes or top universities among them, the Georgia Institute of Technology, Stanford University, the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Southern California, and MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
Things will change now and there is good news for Robot lovers, at least those who are rich. The Silicon Company announced on its blog that Willow Robot’s open-source PR2, which can pretty much, be programmed to do anything you want it to, is now officially for sale. They have fixed the price at $400,000. The price might be steep but you can always hope for a drop in prices with the increase in volumes. One can also hope for newer developments on the platform.
It is approximately 5-foot-tall, wheeled, two-armed and features two computers inside its base, each an 8-core server with 24GB of RAM, and a battery system that’s tantamount to 16 laptop batteries. Its head sports two pairs of stereo cameras. The PR2 also has a tilting laser scanner that helps it create 3D models so it can avoid bumping into walls.
Via: News.Cnet , WillowGarage
