IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - March 2017 - 86

Do-It-Yourself Design
for Social Robots
An Open-Source Hardware Platform
to Encourage Innovation

©istockphoto.com/Eloisaconti

By Cesar Vandevelde, Francis Wyffels,
Bram Vanderborght, and Jelle Saldien

By Cesar Vandevelde, Francis Wyffels,
Bram Vanderborght, and Jelle Saldien

O

ne of the chief obstacles in achieving wider
acceptance of robotics is that only experi-
enced roboticists can develop robotics ap -
plications. If we want robots in our homes
and offices, we need more tools and plat-
forms that reduce the costs in time and money of
prototyping robots. The open-source paradigm offers a
potential solution to these key factors. However, creating
open-source robotics hardware does not mean just making

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MRA.2016.2639059
Date of publication: 21 February 2017

86

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IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE

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March 2017

the design files available online. It is essential to design the
hardware in such a way that it can be built and modified
by nonexpert users.
In this article, we summarize our four years of experience
in creating open-source robotics in academia that led to the
social robot Ono and the Open Platform for Social Robotics
(Opsoro) design toolkit for social robots. We detail our
design approach, leveraging do-it-yourself (DIY)-friendly
techniques to create systems that, though complex, can be
assembled and modified by novices. We describe four exper-
iments, two focusing on the assembly of an open-source
robot and two using our toolkit to create novel social robot
1070-9932/17©2017IEEE



http://www.istockphoto.com/Eloisaconti

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