Kickstarter

I'm designing and creating small to medium sized robots that disabled people can easily carry with them on a wheel chair or scooter to assist with various tasks. Some of those tasks might be picking objects off the floor, retrieving objects, going for help if needed, and other suitable tasks. This requires a good solid base as well as a good manipulator with decent repeatable accuracy.

I am working on the four wheeled base with independent steering, speed control, and encoders on each wheel. This is the first phase - getting the base to a point where it can successfully navigate an environment autonomously or be remotely controlled by the user. The base needs additional parts, including two dual motor controllers and suitable controller(s) to be slaved to and controlled by the BeagleBoard brain. I will design and fabricate a new set of decks as well as parts for the wheel assemblies. I expect this phase to take sometime, since it is quite a complex task for a robot to successfully navigate around changing environments. I need to obtain and test various types of sensors and integrate them into the design of the base. Everything will be 100% Open Source (any custom hardware designs and software), so anyone will be free to help out on any phase of this project.

Monies will be used for:
1) Purchasing materials for parts fabrication using a CNC and 3D CAD.
2) Purchasing more Lynxmotion parts and electronics (including motor controllers and sensors)
3) Purchasing a small CNC machine, that can be linked with my 3D CAD software (Alibre Design Expert) for creation of custom parts.
4) Purchasing one very fast desktop PC and a fast laptop, to accomplish the 3D CAD, software development, field testing, as well as other computing tasks this project requires.
5) Purchasing a full TechShop ($125.00/month) membership for myself, which will give me full access to around $500k in tools, classes, etc to use as much as I want.

The end result will be a fully working remote controlled/autonomous robot with an arm and gripper for manipulation and grasping objects. The robot will be easily transportable by a disabled person in a wheelchair (powered or unpowered) or powered scooter, so they can have instant assistance where ever they might need it. This includes myself.