Free Robotics

Free Robotics Paul Fitzpatrick

Outline
The iCub: a Free Robot that costs € 200,000
Freedom Defined: the OSHW definition
How does the iCub stack up?
Other open hardware projects
Arduino, RepRap, Global Village Construction Set
Patents and copyright
How roboticists and OSHW can help each other
Talk is personal opinion, not that of IIT or Robot Rebuilt

iCub http://icub.org

About the iCub
Scale: 4-year old infant
53 degrees of freedom (7 per arm, 9 per hand, 6 in head, 3 in torso, 6 per leg)
Off-board power, computation; on-board PC104 card, micro-controllers
Tendon driven joints for shoulder, hand
Stereo cameras, microphones, force/torque sensors, gyros
V1.2: sensorized fingertips, palms (108 taxels)

Free?
You can get one built
€ 200,000 (plus customs etc)
21-23 iCubs built so far
Free software
Publicly archived; OSI-approved license (LGPL)
Free hardware designs
Publicly archived; OSI-approved license (GPL)
License approved for software, not hardware
Lots of discussions going on about how to build good free licenses for hardware

Why freedom helps
Full-body humanoids are hugely complicated and expensive to develop
An open process is an enormous simplifier
Secrecy is lossy
Hard to do across loosely collaborating institutions
Secrecy is complicated, bureaucratic
Secrecy is costly
For loose collaborations across space and time, an open process wins hands-down
Free licenses useful for setting trusted ground rules

Hardware vs software
Good, well-understood free licenses exist for software
Copyright based
The same is not true for hardware
Often people borrow software or media licenses
But law related to hardware is very different
e.g. regulated by patents, not copyright
Different types of hardware have different legal issues
A lot of thinking about this happening right now
e.g. TAPR Open Hardware License

OSHW definition
Open Source Hardware Statement of Principles and Definition is under development by community
http://freedomdefined.org/OSHW
Not a license. A standard by which to evaluate licenses.
Modeled after the Debian Free Software Guidelines.
New, still being hammered out (v1.0 was released Feb. 2011)
“ Open Source Hardware (OSHW) is:
a term for tangible artifacts – machines, devices, or other physical things –
whose design has been released to the public in such a way that anyone can make, modify, distribute, and use those things.”

OSHW terms (v1.0)
Documentation
Design files must be released
In preferred format for making changes, e.g. original CAD
Scope
Must be clear what portion of design is covered by license
Necessary software
Any software required for operation must be released under OSI-approved license, or specified well for implementation by others
Derived works
Allow: manufacture, sale, distribution under same license, use, modification of designs and products built from them, etc.

OSHW terms (v1.0)
Free redistribution
No restriction or royalty or fee for selling or giving away the designs or modified versions of designs
Attribution
May be required; change in branding for modified versions may be required
No discrimination
Against persons or groups
Against fields of endeavor

OSHW terms (v1.0)
Distribution of license
Rights granted are automatically extended to recipient when the work is redistributed
Not specific to product
Individual parts of a design can be used and distributed without grief
No restriction on other hardware or software
e.g. can't insist hardware be used only with free software
Technology neutral

So is the iCub free?
Yes! Maybe!
GPL-licensed, and GPL meets spirit of OSHW...
… depending on how you read it. Needs a rewrite for hardware (TAPR, Hardware Design Public License v0.04)
A bit like free software a decade ago
Good faith effort: have CAD files, layouts, BOM, wiki, making-of videos, …
More importantly, public repository is used internally
But it takes a lot of documentation to build a humanoid!
But is everything there? Probably not. And it is messy. Needs pressure from 3rd-party implementors
Also: v1.2 has a patent application on tactile skin

Benefits?
Better institutional memory
Information made public is archived, duplicated, indexed by search engines
Secrets are expensive, and get lost
Clearly better for the next grad student or contractor that shows up
Confidence booster for users
Can't be canceled like Aibo+Qrio
Collaborators vs consumers
Defensive publication

Potential costs?
Missed revenue
Others can scoop up and exploit work
Copyright-based license can be worked around
Mistakes are public
Published material needs vigilance to keep third-party, non-free material out
iCub developers may get away with mistakes a juicier target might not

PR2 Willow Garage

Free Software, Closed Hardware
$400,000 ($280,000 with open-source-contributor discount)
Free, open-source software = ROS etc
Hardware is not open
(Many bloggers are confused about this)
“ Modularity” specification not open
No sharing information off-premises, full license requires signature and approving counter-signature from Willow.
CAD, BOM etc. not freely available

Arduino Smart Projects, Italy

Arduino
$30 microcontroller board
Technically not novel
But very easy to use by non-engineers, great doc, videos
Everything that can be free and open, is (but name reserved)
Reference design license: Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 2.5
Massively popular
Lots of copies, derivatives
Copyright-based licensing is being respected, emulated

Beagleboard Texas Instruments Digi-Key

RepRap reprap.org

RepRap
Home-brew 3D printer
GPL license
Self-replication goal
Status: “Mendel” version makes 50% of own parts (not counting fasteners)
Still needs plenty of “vitamins” (parts not made by RepRap)

RepRap family
Makerbot and other companies sell 3D printers (or printer kits) based on RepRap
$1300 for thing-o-matic kit
GPL'd
Copyright-based licensing of RepRap is being respected, emulated
Thingiverse community for sharing designs
Sometimes used for prototyping before sending to service e.g. Shapeways to build part in desired material

Global Village Construction Set

CEB Press
Building material from compressed earth
Buy: $8000. Designs: Creative Commons by-sa-3.0

Arduino inside

RepRap inside (plans)

Colliding on thingiverse e.g. thing:7291

Signs of a toolchain...
But is it on a firm foundation?

OSHW caveat
“ In promoting Open Hardware, it is important not to unintentionally deceive designers regarding the extent to which their licenses actually can control their designs. Under U.S. law, and law in many other places, copyright does not apply to electronic designs. Patents do. The result is that an Open Hardware license can in general be used to restrict the plans but probably not the manufactured devices or even restatements of the same design that are not textual copies of the original. ”

Stallman on hardware
Stallman = head of Free Software Foundation
Doesn't see need for “Free Hardware”, since copying hardware is expensive (1999 article)
[my interpretation] The opportunity cost (to society) of prohibiting cheap things is high. The opportunity cost of prohibiting expensive things is low.
Flags problem with patents
Expensive to obtain (copyright is free)
Work differently to copyrights, different legal world
“ Copyleft” hack has no clear equivalent

Patents
The original “open-source”
Document your invention thoroughly
How does Kinect work? Read PrimeSense's patent
In return, get a monopoly on it
Duration: generally 20 years
Idea: promise of this reward motivates inventors
Pre-expiration, patent limits others
Increases costs, complexity
Post-expiration, patent helps others
Well-documented invention in the public domain

Patents + OSHW
Recent patents can inhibit OSHW
Expired patents can stimulate OSHW
Patents and OSHW could co-exist
Closed components within open hardware is normal
Just another type of “vitamin”
Vitamin = part that can't be made in free toolchain
For whatever reason, technological or legal

tactile triangles IIT / University of Genova

iCub tactile triangles
Patent pending on iCub component
“ tactile triangle” invention patented
“ tactile triangle” design doc available under GPL
What does this mean?
Giorgio Metta's thoughts:
“ with the patent of the skin sensor placement, the idea of the triangular allocation becomes exclusively owned by IIT/Unige (which can be exploited or licensed openly)”
“ ... a specific instantiation (e.g. the PCB design and corresponding software) can still be under GPL without affecting the patent.”
Not sure about whether this actually will work out
“ Father of iCub” One of patent holders

Dual-licensing
A classic Free Software business model. Goes like this:
Company A offers software freely under GPL or similar
Happy community of users develop, software becomes well known
Company B uses software in a product
Company B wants to ship product without offering source code...
Need to pay Company A for a license that allows that
With patent, hardware version of this business may be possible
Without patent, Company B could just redraft designs and work around copyright

Work in progress
How to do this right is not clear
Borrowing software licenses is a hack
There's a whole bunch of law applying to different kinds of hardware
Lots of nuances
Country-by-country issues
Not much precedent yet
(although open hardware goes way back, before software)

Adafruit talk at: foo camp east 2010

Reducing price of free hardware
Need better compilers
Need better, cheaper robots for assembly tasks
Need to rebuild robots and tools of all sorts for “buildability”
(Yes, this is circular – that's what makes it fun to do)
Need cheaper software
Expensive, proprietary software dominates much of design toolchain (like early software days)
Need folks with hardware+software skills (e.g. roboticists) to liberate the toolchain

Benefits for robotics researchers
Lots of talk about standard robot platforms for research
Ok for some areas, e.g. navigation
But maybe premature for others, e.g. manipulation
Need to compress the time and cost for creating new hardware into a shorter part of a grad student's life-cycle
If the work of this generation of students is liberated, it benefits the next generation in ways you cannot anticipate

Plus: summer school in Italy “ VVV11”

Free Robotics

by eshuy

Accessibility

Categories

Upload Details

Usage Rights

1 Embed 1

Statistics

Free Robotics Presentation Transcript