Software

Find a Robot For You With The New RobotShop Search

Friday, June 10th, 2011

It is very important for us at RobotShop that our customers find the robot or part they need in the fastest and most efficient way. That is why RobotShop announces today their new smart search engine that will allow you to find the robotic product you are looking for.

If you are curious, you can try it right now or read-on in order to get to know its new features.

The new search engine has many new features including auto-complete and product suggestion on-the-fly, fuzzy term matching, and search refinement. As illustrated below you start getting results and suggestions as soon as you start typing in the search box.

On-the-fly Suggestions

On-the-fly Suggestions

Fuzzy term matching tries to better understand your query in the case that you made a typo or that there are no search results. This brings the “Did you mean…?” functionality that is so popular in some other search engines.

Fuzzy Search Term Matching

Fuzzy Search Term Matching

Also, search results can be refined by price, brand, and category. This means that you can better filter irrelevant products in a faster way and find only the item you want and satisfies your criteria.

Refined Search and Related Terms

Refined Search and Related Terms

This new smart (read Artificial Intelligence) search engine will evolve with time as you use it. It will learn which products are more relevant to a specific term and what product is related to which other one. In short, the more you use it, the better it will become, so start searching now!

Our crazy programmers are now working on Smart Dynamic Navigation. Stay tuned to your favorite web site because lots of new features are coming. Please continue to suggest new features, we love your feedback.

RobotShop Feedback

RobotShop Feedback

HRP2-JSK is PR2 Best Friend

Friday, July 9th, 2010

We are happy to announce that the PR2 from Willow Garage has a very good friend, the Kawada HRP2-JSK. Since robots do not have emotions (yet) or know the concept of friendship (yet), by “fiends” we mean that they can use the same open source code to perform the same tasks.

This might not seem quite astounding but it actually is. This means that the robot peripherals, physical models, and other specific parameters are properly abstracted and parametrized so the same actions can be accomplished using the same (or very similar)  instructions by the two different robots.

Humanoid Robot Platform HRP2-JSK

Humanoid Robot Platform HRP2-JSK

This is the first step into having more universal robots that can run generic programs and perform generic tasks. In the same way every PC was programmed differently in the past, and now can support a wide range of applications thanks to the hardware abstraction provided by the Operating System (Such as Linux, Mac, or even Windows), robots programs will be interchangeable in the future.

We are looking forward to see how the robots can share their programs and their knowledge when they will be taking over the world and enslaving humanity!

Virtual Breadboard – Free Arduino Simulator

Wednesday, July 7th, 2010

Virtual Breadboard is a free circuit prototyping software that has readily available hardware and software simulation tools. It can simulate various hobbyists microcontrollers including the popular Arduino, and the Parallax Basic Stamp.

As shown below, this software not only simulates the Arduino hardware but also runs the software in the virtual microcontroller.

Virtual Breadboard - Arduino Demo

Virtual Breadboard - Arduino Demo

See the video here: Virtual Breadboard – Arduino Demo

This could become a tool of choice for roboticians building and testing custom circuitry for their robots.

Via Hack n Mod.

Microsoft makes Robotics Developer Studio free

Tuesday, May 25th, 2010

Microsoft Studio

Microsoft has been working quietly for some time now (very little publicity) on its Robotics Developer Studio software.

And, it has announced a major shift in strategy: from now on Microsoft RDS will be FREE.

By making software available for everyone to download, the Redmond company hopes to promote and speed up the development of robotics applications among researchers and developers.

RDS is not an operating system for robots but rather a visual programming interface with tools and a 3D simulator.

It works particularly well with platforms Create by iRobot, LEGO Mindstorms, CoroWare and Parallax.

However, Microsoft’s RDS software is not alone in this niche.

It also faces competition from Urbi by Gostai (France), ERSP by Evolution Robotics, the Player-Stage project and ROS by WIllow George.