Abstract

The use of social robots in child education has emerged as a promising human-robot interaction domain. Social robots were successfully implemented into educational institutions and revealed a great potential. The main obstacle against the wider design and use of robotics is that it is considered a task that only experienced roboticists can handle. Fostering robots in schools and every-day life, yells for tools and platforms able to reduce the costs of prototyping robots, in terms of time and money. The open-source paradigm offers the opportunity to overcome these obstacles. This article summarizes the most popular up-to-date open-source platforms, that can support the development of social robots. The aim of the paper is to provide the basic knowledge of the available platforms, so as to enlighten teachers, amateurs and researchers regarding the open-source paradigm. The most popular open-source robotic platforms, in term of software, hardware and simulator are presented. Open-source robotic platforms are numerous. Five of each category are selected and presented. The selection is based on the most recent educational and reallife applications that use these platforms according to the literature. Extensibility and applicability of the selected platforms are investigated, and comparison of features takes place. Future challenges are also discussed.

Citation

  • E. Vrochidou, M. Manios, V. G. Kaburlasos, F. Panagiotopoulos, C. Aitsidis, V. Ferelis, “Design of social robots using open-source robotic platforms”, Proceedings of the International Conference on Robotics & Mechatronics and Social Implementations, Varna, Bulgaria, 28 August – 01 September 2018, pp. 21-26
  • E. Vrochidou, M. Manios, V. G. Kaburlasos, F. Panagiotopoulos, Ch. Aitsidis, V. Ferelis, “Design of social robots using open-source robotic platforms”, Complex Control Systems , vol. 1, pp. 21-26, 2018.

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