Robot Control Console for Google Android

Posted 16 Feb 2009 at 19:00 UTC by steve

We reported a while back on Forknife, a cupcake-crazed robot that could be teleoperated from any phone using the open source Android OS. Howard Gordon of Surveyor writes to tell us about a new development:

We teamed up with Jeffrey to build an open-source Android console for the Surveyor SRV-1 robot controller, and I think you might enjoy the results.

The result is a free software control console app that works for Surveyor SRV-1 robots, as well as the Macpod Forknife. This includes not just the SRV-1 Blackfin robot itself but also other robots based on the SRV-1 Blackfin camera board, such as the YARB Robotic Blimp. The SRV-1 console app is Free Software is licensed under GPL so this could be the start of a really interesting Android control interface for robots. It will be interesting to see what feature are added next. For more see the srv1console app page at Google and the SRV-1 control protocol specs.