Low-cost Robotics

Low-cost Robotics
Short Description:	The project is aimed at developing tools and methodologies to support the design and implementation of low-cost robots, aimed at the mass market.
Coordinator:	AndreaBonarini (andrea.bonarini@polimi.it)
Tutor:	AndreaBonarini (andrea.bonarini@polimi.it)
Collaborator:
Students:	MartinoMigliavacca (migliavacca@elet.polimi.it)
Research Area:	Robotics
Research Topic:	Robot development
Start:	2010/01/01
End:	2012/12/31
Status:	Active
Level:	PhD
Type:	Thesis

The spreading of Robotics in the society announced since at least two decades seems to take a longer time. Many problems have to be solved to have reliable, autonomous robots, able to do something interesting at the price the market would pay. We argue that one of the main issues concerns the approach taken by large part of the Robotics community, more oriented at solving big problems, than at putting on the market products. There is probably also a lack of shared methodology to achieve the quality needed for a product at a price people would pay for it. Mass market robots are coming, but they are coming mostly as a "sweat and tears" effort of successful companies that have been able to rise fundings for painful "trial and test" development.

This project is aimed at developing methodologies and tools to design and implement autonomous robots that not only do what they are expected to do, but are designed to match market requirements in terms of reliability and cost-effectiveness.

The first application field we will face will be Robogames, where higly-interactive, autonomous robots are involved in active games with people.