Geekings From France
build their own
projects (robotic
project, educational
project, etc.). As
robotics is computing
plus electronics plus
mechanics, and only
few users know all of
these fields, we
wanted to give tools to
allow the user to focus
on what he likes. Then,
the robot is designed
to be able to forget
one or two of these
fields. Of course, com-
puting basis are needed. This way, we
do our best to help users, giving lots
of downloadable examples and
providing personalized support.
Open architecture also means an
expandable and customizable robot.
Lots of robot makers want to reuse
some parts they already have (arm,
I2C stuff, etc.). With POB, they can.
This open approach is one of the keys
of our success in education, because
educators have a lot of possibilities to
focus on what they want.
POB ARM.
schools. With RISBEE, we target junior
high schools and secondary schools.
We had the surprise to see that highly
skilled users also sometimes use
RISBEE for quick sensor tests or quick
idea validation. 2) Keeping the “open”
philosophy, RISBEE is designed to
work with different robots from the
market. We are negotiating with well
known robot makers to adapt RISBEE
to their robots. The goal is to have
only one development environment to
know for several robots. But it is a bit
early to tell more about it.
WB: Could you tell us more about the
development of RISBEE and its goals?
PK: RISBEE follows the same
philosophy: 1) To make the robot
accessible for people who don’t know
programming. Historically speaking,
POB users were mainly from higher
education and a little from secondary
Good Sharky,
Colonel God!
POB Technology terms the hobbyist
use of their products as “innovative
leisure,” and we certainly agree with
such a moniker. The POB robot is a great
educational tool, but its accessibility
and expandability also make it a great
way to spend a casual afternoon
tinkering. We are more of the
mechanical predilection, so we
wanted to see how easy it would be
to add on a mechanical addition to
the POB robot. As we alluded to
earlier, we had a few extra servos to
mess with. Even though the POB bot
was already equipped with a capable
gripper in the front, we thought of
adding another robotic arm to the
back (or perhaps it was more of a
scorpion tail, depending on how you
look at it). After using the test
function to see that all of our servos
(modified for full rotation) were fully
functional, we were ready to go. Our
additional arm was assembled in a bit
of slapdash fashion, and we’re sure
that many folks could come up with
something much more elegant than
the zip ties we used to attach the arm
POB YAW.
POB YAW RATE SENSOR.
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