Today at ICRA 2010 (International Conference on Robotics and Automation), the French company Robosoft presents the Open Source release of robuBOXKompaï, the Software Development Kit of the Kompaï R&D robot, designed to develop interactive robots that assist elderly and dependent persons.
"We believe that robotic solutions to help dependent persons must be customized," says Vincent Dupourqué, Robosoft CEO. "The Kompaï R&D robot, designed to develop pilot applications for personal assistants, is now shipped with Open Source Software. We believe that this will contribute to the quick development of operational solutions through proven and available equipment, when combined with software tools that can be tailored by developers."
"Open source solutions are needed in the field of assistance robotics," says Philippe Bidaud, Director of ISIR, a leading personal robotics Research Laboratory, "having Open Source application software that's compatible with existing and available equipment will enable us to develop our research into contents for natural interactions a lot more efficiently. This will also help us to quickly develop full-scale experiments with our medical partners."
Kompaï R&D is a modular and open robot, intended to develop assistance applications for use by dependent persons in their daily lives. RobuBOX-Kompaï provides functions such as speech recognition (for understanding simple orders, and to give a certain level of response), localization and navigation (for going from one place to another on demand or on its own initiative), communication (it is permanently connected to the Internet and all its services), automation (for personal monitoring, recognition of gestures and postures)...
Through the provision of this open source software (LGPL licence), anyone with a Kompaï R&D robot will benefit from the many basic functions that are already in place, and also be able to modify and adapt them, while developing new ones that can be shared with other research teams.
Kompaï development is supported by the European programmes AAL and ANR (DOMEO project).
For further information, please visit:
http://www.robosoft.com
About ISIR
ISIR is a multidisciplinary research Institute of the Pierre and Marie Curie University and is linked to the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), which brings together researchers and teachers from the mechanical, automation, signal processing, IT, neurosciences and social science disciplines. ISIR researchers are more particularly focused on large projects that bring people and robotics closer together, including personal assistance robotics, a subject of central importance.
About robuBOX-Kompaï
Development of the robuBOX began in 2006. Several service robots equipped with preliminary versions of robuBOX have
already been deployed as automated people transport vehicles (robuCAB and robuRIDE), as military robots (robuROC) and as research robots(robuLAB).
RobuBOX-Kompaï is a Kompaï-dedicated version that allows customers to build their own advanced robotics solutions. Its development and its ability to be modified is down to the Microsoft® Robotics Developer Studio environment.
About Robosoft
Robosoft is the European leader in service robotics solutions. With over 20 years of recognized scientific and industrial expertise in this field, Robosoft has supplied advanced robotics solutions since 1985 in the transport, cleaning, security, health and research markets.
Now beyond professional applications, the era of personal robotics has begun. Robosoft thinks that its service robots, known as "robuTERs®" will be part of everyday life within 5 years. RobuTERs will make everyone's lives easier in activities of leisure, education, culture, health, and in particular for the elderly and dependent. In order to provide these applications in daily life, Robosoft has developed its own software technology, known as robuBOX. This is already built into the heart of all robots made by Robosoft, but it can also be licensed to third party integrators or other robot manufacturers.