Open Source Qbo Robot Coming Soon

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The folks out at Willow Garage may have a bit of competition in the open-source robot programming market thanks to the folks at Thecorpora, who have announced that their own open-source robot, the Qbo, is nearly complete.

The Qbo doesn’t seem to have a lot of the functionality that the PR2 does–while we saw the PR2 fold socks and deliver mail and suchlike, we haven’t seen similar functionality out of the Qbo. Though to be fair, we also haven’t seen the Qbo out and operating near as long as the PR2.

What the Qbo does have so far, though, is a lot of options. One, you’ll actually be able to control these with a Wiimote or a PS3 controller (what, no love for the Xbox 360?), so look for loads of Qbo Fight Club videos coming soon to YouTube. Plus, you’ll actually be able to do something really interesting with the cameras and sensors: you’ll be able to stack them to provide something like “machine-vision” and use it like a remote camera, if I get the idea. There are even plans for distance traveled measurements, mouth and eye expression control, and more.

So it may not be the next big threat to service industry types everywhere, but the Qbo might be able to do some interesting stuff, at any rate.