I tried to send a support ticket, but it referred me to this forum, so my question is does your company offer any robots that are programmable? As in could I write C program code that will operate off of the robot’s camera/sensors and then control the robot’s movements via the C programming code? It doesn’t have to be the C language, but I need to interact with the camera so I can see and then tell the robot what to do. I have heard about open source libraries that have image recognition, but I really don’t need it, I can handle the programming by myself, or I will try to use the libraries if I ever need to. There is a C programmable robot out there called Darwin-OP but it costs $1200 and is actually kind of slow, from looking at it I’m not sure if it could even handle the processing computation that’s going to be required for what I’m going to do. Or even if I could connect a laptop to it and have the laptop process the program/camera images and then send the movement controls back to the robot via wireless link or ethernet cord/usb cord (whatever they’re going to use), that could help too.
Okay, wow, I can’t see Darwin actually being bought for $12000… The website says Aldebaran Nao can only be purchased by educational/research organizations… is there still a way I can get my hands on one? Or, is there a way I could just buy a motherboard that has usb connections and the ability to run off of program code? That way I could just connect my hardware to the motherboard via USB/power source and then run the program code off of the camera and power on/off the addition hardware…
Actually I would prefer to have just the microcontroller/board and the ability to plug it into hardware of my choice via USB/power cord so I could just connect a webcam and a couple of robot parts and do my work from there… anything like that? I am a customer, if you have what I want I’m buying. 
Wow thanks! That’s exactly what I was looking for! Can I find robot parts that I could plug into the microcontroller/single board computer that are made for this type of thing? Like a single robot arm and hand that plugs into a USB with full control of the arm? I’m also going to check out Phidgets…
What are the “out of the box” functions of the Hanson Robokind robot Zeno with the R 50 body?
Will everything have to be programmed from scratch, order to move, and talk to it (have it recognize speech) and act as a chatbot, or are the chatbot and basic responsive movements already pre-programmed?
What are the “out of the box” functions of the Hanson Robokind robot Zeno with the R 50 body?
Will everything have to be programmed from scratch, order to move, and talk to it (have it recognize speech) and act as a chatbot, or are the chatbot and basic responsive movements already pre-programmed? Or do you have to write the AIML yourself to make it conversive?
We do offer many programmable robots. As a matter of fact the majority of the robots we carry are programmable. If you are looking into getting a large-sized advanced humanoid robot, there are three main options: Aldebaran Nao, Robotis DARwIn OP, and Hanson Robokind.
These robots are comparable in size, strength and processing speed; their computation capabilities are similar to a netbook. They are all programmable and they all run Linux. If you need to do heavy image processing, you will probably need to off-load the computations to a more powerful computer (you could use a networked computer for instance). If you use a framework such as ROS, the communication process and many aspects of the programming can be simplified.
If your goal is to develop a new vision algorithm, it is OK to write it from scratch but if you want to use existing algorithms it is always good to research what already exist so to not reinvent the wheel.
The best way to communicate with these robots is WiFi or Ethernet.
Let us know if you have further questions.
It is also worth noting that humanoids are not the only type of robots, you could use wheeled tor tracked robots with cameras such as RB-Drr-03
Finally, DARwIn’s price is not 1200$, it is 12 000$
These robots are indeed expensive but certainly not overpriced. They are very advanced machines and are worth every penny. Many developers and research institutions buy them because they are amazing development platforms.
Nao is indeed only available for research institutions at the moment. Also note its price is 16 000$
You can for sure run your software on a computer and you could use the same computer to control a robot. If you are worried about the price, you might want to opt for a smaller humanoid platform like the Bioloid.
If you want to make advanced image processing you will need a single board computer at minimum or ideally a full-blown computer. If you want to add IO to a computer in order to plug sensors and other devices you can use a Phidgets 888.
You will find robotic arms here: robotshop.com/robotic-arms.html
Most of them can be controlled via a computer.
Out-of-the-box, Hanson Robokind can do this:
]Walking/:m]
]Facial expressions/:m]
]Face Tracking and Eye Contact/:m]
]Speech output through text-to-speech/:m]
More features will be added through software updates and we will update you as those features are released.
Advanced features like speech-to-text will need to be programmed from scratch or using existing chatbot technology.