Do-It-Yourself Design for Social Robots: An Open-Source Hardware Platform to Encourage Innovation

One of the chief obstacles in achieving wider acceptance of robotics is that only experienced roboticists can develop robotics applications. If we want robots in our homes and offices, we need more tools and platforms that reduce the costs in time and money of prototyping robots. The open-source paradigm offers a potential solution to these key factors. However, creating open-source robotics hardware does not mean just making the design files available online. It is essential to design the hardware in such a way that it can be built and modified by nonexpert users.