Twin Tweaks ...
POB WORK.
POB TOOLS.
but also a realistic goal for the
beginners that start out with RISBEE.
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Woolley Brothers: What audience is
the POB bot meant to appeal to? Is
it intended for hobbyists, serious
roboticists, or both?
With RISBEE showing some
similarity to other graphical programs
(like LEGO Mindstorms programming),
we were curious about what the
philosophy was behind developing this
new system. Such an ambitious robot,
in general, was also bound to have an
interesting design philosophy behind
it, and to learn more about RISBEE
and the POB mind set, we contacted
Philippe Kervizic at POB Technology.
Philippe Kervizic: This is a good
question. Most of our users are
educational, for teaching robotics and
automation from junior high schools
(introducing the concepts) to higher
education (improvement of the
engineer sciences). Thanks to the
design of the robot and software,
the skill level of the users are from
beginners to serious users. Lost of
hobbyists use the robot, even quite
POB SCREEN FIREPLACE.
POB SCREEN HAND.
young hobbyists. Thanks to the
calculating power of the POB Eye and
the I/O possibilities, serious roboticists
also use the robot or parts, programming in C. For example, a researcher
runs a neural network on the robot
to study the action selection for the
robot behavior, like animals do. I am
myself another example. I met POB 18
months ago while I bought a POB bot
to build a robot which turns the pages
of a book. I am computer science oriented and I have very few electronics
or mechanical knowledge. I looked for
existing electronics to program. Then,
I built a robot with parts of printers
and scanners, managed
by the POB Bot parts.
(Two months later, I
joined POB to manage
the sales activities.)
WB: What is the
philosophy behind the
design of the POB
robot? Is it meant to
be educational,
accessible, expandable,
or all of the above?
PK: The philosophy
behind the robot is
to give tools to users,
based on an open
robotic architecture, to
76 SERVO 05.2008
