IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - September 2023 - 139

robots. The FarmBot [120] employs the CNC robot framework
to automate small farms in home agriculture spaces [see
Figure 7(b)]. The developers of FarmBot sell the hardware, but
the source files for the robot are freely available and can be
modified or repaired as per the users' needs.
HAPTIC AND TELEOPERATION INTERFACES
Haptic and robot teleoperation interfaces have also seen ORH
solutions that users can build on their own. The HapKit [121]
platform is a 1-DoF device that can be used as an input and also
generate forces that are experienced by the user [see Figure 7(c)].
The kit is quite inexpensive (costing less than US$50) and can be
intuitively built and used by a novice user, which is ideal for
learning environments. Having a similar goal of being easily
fabricated, WoodenHaptics [122] is a 3-DoF haptic device, the
structure of which is made from laser-cut stacked plywood
sheets. The design of the device also focuses on the ease of making
modifications to the device for different applications
requiring spatial haptic interactions. Although haptic devices
have been commonly used as interfaces in teleoperating a robot,
the ROBOPuppet [123] takes an alternate kinesthetic approach
to simplifying teleoperation by creating a scaled-down replica of
the target robot. The operator is expected to be able to more intuitively
control the motion of the robot by manipulating the tabletop
robot model, whose joint angles are duplicated exactly in the
target robot.
MEDICAL ROBOTS
Open sourcing hardware in medical robotics can be challenging,
particularly because of the stringent requirements placed
on robot systems in this field. Although open source platforms
such as the da Vinci research kit (DVRK) [124] and
Raven-II [125] have markedly improved accessibility to the
control software of commercial surgical robots, the hardware
of medical robot systems remains relatively more exclusive.
Some ORH in medical robotics targets peripherals around
the open software surgical robots, such as the Stewart Platform
Research Kit platform [126], which simulates body
organ motion for studies with the DVRK robot. Medical
robot hardware itself has started to become publicly available
through initiatives like Open Source Medical Robots [127]
and Pillforge medical capsule robots [128]. The ENDO robot
presented in [127] is a continuum manipulator designed to
lower the barrier of entry in surgical robotics research. And
in [128], a platform for rapid development for medical capsule
robots is proposed, with hardware and software component
modules that can be assembled for testing prototypes quickly.
However, ENDO and Pillforge are just a few ORH solutions
in medical robotics, and more open source hardware that can
further lower barriers to new robotic technologies in this field
should be explored.
AERIAL ROBOTS
ORH for UAVs has been widely popular among researchers
for their flexibility and ease of implementation, similar to
ORH for mobile robots, as discussed previously. Lim et al.
[12] present a survey of open hardware for quadrotor UAVs,
so for brevity, those projects are not detailed here. Hardware
for other types of UAVs, like lighter-than-air (LTA) crafts,
have also been open sourced; a design for a robotic gondola
attached beneath a balloon is proposed in [129] as an indoor
LTA airship that can be employed in research and education
[see Figure 7(d)]. Similar to medical robots, open source projects
in UAVs have been explored more as software platforms
and flight controllers. But as more applications for UAVs are
discovered and, with the increased convenience of fabrication
from rapid-prototyping methods, ORH for UAVs can be
expected to also become just as abundantly available as
mobile robots.
DEVELOPING AN ORH PROJECT
Many of the ORH projects categorized in the previous section
exemplify a development process that can lead to a widely
used and retained ORH with an active user community.
Prospective developers can better understand the steps
involved in creating an ORH through these projects, especially
if they work in a similar robotics domain. In the following
discussion, we detail the pipeline of developing a successful
Actuators
Controls
Sensors
Modeling and
Manufacturing
(a)
(b)
(c)
(d)
FIGURE 6. A component module and toolkit ORH projects. (a) Components of the Soft Robotics Toolkit [102]. (b) A digit sensor on a
multifingered hand [112]. (c) The SRoCS [108]. (d) A Punyo soft bubble gripper [113].
SEPTEMBER 2023 IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE
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