Erle Robotics is a company making cost-effective components for DIY robotics projects as well as drones. Its offering, the PXFmini, a shield crafted for the $5 Raspberry Pi Zero that comes with a suite of sensors which only a couple of years ago would have costed thousands of dollars, including gravity, gyroscope, compass, pressure, temperature, and battery sensors. The most noteworthy feature about it was Linux which has come about as the most exciting robotics platform in use. The systems that are built with Linux vary from bots hacked together in home garages to the most sophisticated machines that come out of the fastest-growing hardware startups in the Bay Area. Linux seem to be our robotic future. This is mainly due to the proliferation of Raspberry Pi micro controllers that are based on an ARM processor which can run on Linux. The ARM architecture implies that certain parts of Linux have not been ported to the Rasp Pi, however, for basic robotics controls, the Raspberry Pi with Linux is the perfect fit for certain very capable robots and drones. There’s also something known as the Robotic Operating System (ROS). It is not an operating system but an open source framework that was released by Willow Garage under a free license in 2009. It is now being maintained by the Open Source Robotics Foundation (OSRF). OSRF had made an announcement in 2014 regarding its plans for adding ARM Linux support to the ROS. Through the utilisation of an open source approach, ROS has compiled many of the advances in robotics controls and operation. This gives roboticists the ability to access pre-compiled packages which permit them to make systems through common sensors including cameras and force sensors. Owing to ROS and Linux, startups including Savioke and Fetch Robotics are coming out with new robots without needing to worry about motion planning and lower level controls. This saves many years of development and highlights the power of an open source ecosystem in terms of technological development.
