IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - September 2023 - 145

away from open source hardware. But the growing utility of
development platforms for collaboration, hardware repositories,
and project management tools can aid in extending the
life of future ORH projects [147]. These platforms help invite
new users, engage experienced users, and encourage potential
developers to share their own adaptations.
In this way, sustaining and continually
iterating the ORH is distributed within the
community and simplified for the developer.
Eventually, this cycle of sharing ORH
can also stimulate more sharing, thus compounding
the advantages for both users
and developers.
One of the crucial areas in which the
ORH community needs to invest more
resources and effort in the future is in properly
documenting and updating their projects.
From the surveyed projects listed in
Table 2, only roughly a third of the projects
have been updated in the last two
years. Although the repositories may still
be accessible and have ample supporting
documentation, dormant ORH projects are
unlikely to be adopted by users, especially if there is no active
community or forum around the project. Moreover, robotics is
a field that moves quite fast, and the longer a project remains
dormant, the more likely it is to become obsolete. Some other
vital aspects of the documentation and instruction/user guide
missing in many of the existing ORH projects are detailed fabrication
instructions and a comprehensive, regularly updated
BOM. A few do offer the alternative option of purchasing the
components from a vendor, but the majority of ORH projects
do not have much guidance on how to fabricate or acquire the
required components. This can be a critical barrier to adoption
of an ORH project, particularly for users who might be new
to a field, or for prototyping methods that might not yet be
widely used. Thus, in the future, the role ORH projects play
in uplifting robotics research will be vastly amplified if they
are regularly supported and updated over a much longer time
period and accompanied by a comprehensive documentation
package that covers a wide range of instructions from fabrication
to operation.
CONCLUSIONS
In this review, we focused on ORH, which we defined as
projects having open sourced their design and auxiliary files
accompanied by proper documentation, addressing a need in
some robotics-specific domain, and centering around
mechanical or electrical hardware components. The characteristics
of ORH projects were discussed by highlighting the
advantages and challenges encountered by both the users and
developers of ORH. For the user, open source projects allow
flexibility to adapt the hardware, and to make modifications,
repairs, and upgrades with support from the wider user community.
On the other hand, the replication of ORH requires
the user to have some knowledge of fabrication and assem "
THE
FUTURE OF ORH
WILL ALSO BE FUELED
BY THE SHRINKING
BARRIER OF ENTRY FOR
QUALITY OF AVAILABLE
ORH.
„
NOVICE USERS AND THE
STEADILY IMPROVING
bly, which can be especially challenging for projects without
good documentation. For the developer, open sourcing the
project ensures reproducibility of his or her hardware, verification
of the designs, and valuable exposure to the community
when the hardware is widely adopted. But developing an
ORH can be quite demanding too,
requiring preparation of supplemental
documentation and instruction guides,
and maintaining simplicity in the designs.
Furthermore, the different domains within
robotics can necessitate unique hardware
and distinct design and fabrication
methods, further diversifying the range of
ORH projects.
To both summarize the state of the art
as well as investigate best practices from
current ORH, we surveyed more than 80
projects and classified them by their application
domain within robotics. Although
not an exhaustive list, the survey aims
to highlight the properties of ORH that
are characteristic to each of the domains.
Moreover, the strategies applied by popular
ORH projects classified are noted. These best practices and
common fabrication methods are then relayed so that developers
can follow them through the design, documentation, and
dissemination phases of new ORH projects. We will make
these ORH features, development practices, and the survey
available online on the ORH website [16].
Open source projects have proliferated throughout robotics,
aiding progress and innovation from accelerated implementations
of novel ideas. This has been evidenced by the growing
availability and widespread adoption of open hardware over
the recent years. We believe that ORH will continue to have a
lasting and notable impact across the robotics landscape, and
its development warrants further exploration efforts.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work was supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation
under grants 1734190 and 1928448.
AUTHORS
Vatsal V. Patel, Department of Mechanical Engineering and
Materials Science, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520
USA. E-mail: v.patel@yale.edu.
Minas V. Liarokapis, New Dexterity research group,
Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering,
University of Auckland, Auckland 1010, New Zealand.
E-mail: minas.liarokapis@auckland.ac.nz.
Aaron M. Dollar, Department of Mechanical Engineering
and Materials Science, Yale University, New Haven, CT
06520 USA. E-mail: aaron.dollar@yale.edu.
REFERENCES
[1] C. Pantofaru, S. Chitta, B. Gerkey, R. Rusu, W. D. Smart, and R. Vaughan,
" Special issue on open source software-supported robotics research, " Auton.
Robots, vol. 34, no. 3, pp. 129-131, Apr. 2013, doi: 10.1007/s10514-013-9325-4.
SEPTEMBER 2023 IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE
145
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10514-013-9325-4
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