RoboSavvy Humanoid Design Challenge

[limor]

Robosavvy is looking for your help in gathering fresh ideas for the design of a new humanoid robot designated for entertainment and education. Our objective is to launch a new open-source humanoid robot that will look great and will be agile and smart at a reasonable cost.


http://grabcad.com/challenges/robosavvy ... -challenge

[PaulL offline]

One thing I've always found frustrating about available bipeds is that few offer any kind of uniformity in the area where their controllers go. It'd be nice to see a void where a bigger board could go, ex PicoITX form factor or similar. Custom controllers just aren't going to promote better control software!! I wouldn't mind seeing a bot with a Pi in it to get started, but I wouldn't buy it if I couldn't fit in something different / faster!

Generally, I think the torso stack should amount to (from the top, down):

Head - with camera - pan and tilt capable.
Shoulder servo - Neck servo(s) - Shoulder servo.
Brains - a main board, plus space for bot-specific electronics.
Battery
Hip Servos

I think it's a bit off to put brains on the back - few "big" boards do well there.

For my project, my plan is to put the bot-specific electronics behind the shoulder servos above a PicoITX board. Some of the electronics will go in some space on the front of the torso.