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Erle Robotics and Canonical combine forces once again to launch the "Internet of Toys" (IoT). Collaborating with the Hybrid Group, they will build the next generation of toys bringing together makers, hackers, DIY robot enthusiasts and developers.

Toys are not just for kids: The IoT is fuelling the development of robotic behaviours controlled via Apps, including UAVs and land robots.

“Robots and drones are complex machines. We want any programmer to control and personalise them easily and give any consumer the ability to add the apps they need," commented Victor Mayoral Vilches, CTO at Erle Robotics.

“Why does IoT have to be boring? Let’s make IoT fun. Open Source will help anybody to participate, connect and personalise toys with apps. Everybody is welcome to join us.” said Maarten Ectors, VP of IoT at Canonical.

Canonical is showcasing the IoT launch at ROSCon Hamburg and Berlin from 3-7th October. One of the stars, the Erle-Spider, demonstrates the power of apps on robots. It is the first legged drone powered by ROS and running ‘snappy’ Ubuntu Core. This smart robot with a 900 MHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 processor runs Linux natively and embeds multi-sensors onboard. The hexapod has been designed to meet the increasing demand of low-cost robot kits to learn, research and develop, while being subject to low levels of regulation.

“Apps on the Erle-Spider personalise what and how you use your robot. See how our spider becomes a real-time journalist and streams everything it sees to Youtube Live Events and listens to Twitter for instructions. One of the many ways makers can easily personalise a device with apps,” added Ectors.

Erle Spider is currently available at a discounted price for a limited time on Indiegogo

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by rubberman

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Short answer for : Erle Robotics publicly committed to making the product family open (the crowdfunding page and press coverage quote a BSD-style plan) and the company has published documentation and a GitHub presence for the platform, so much of the software and docs are available as open source. (arstechnica.com)

How to verify the real status for any given unit or image:

  • Look for a clear LICENSE file and hardware files (KiCad/EAGLE/GERBER/BOM) in the project repos or the documentation site.
  • Inspect released device images for prebuilt kernel modules or binary blobs (those indicate closed drivers).
  • Check ROS packages and upstream repos (community ROS pages and the Erle GitHub org list what’s maintained/open). (erlerobot.github.io)

Quick commands to check a cloned repo or an image (replace <repo> / <image> as appropriate):

git clone git@github.com:erlerobot/<repo>.git
cd <repo>
find . -type f \( -iname 'LICENSE*' -o -iname '*.kicad*' -o -iname '*.sch' -o -iname '*.brd' \)

# If an SD image is provided, mount and search for blobs:
mount -o loop,ro image.img /mnt
find /mnt -type f -iname '*.ko' -o -iname '*.bin' | sed -n '1,200p'

What to expect in practice: Erle’s “brain” was built around mainstream boards and common autopilot stacks, so most low-level drivers live in mainline kernels and ROS packages are open; any proprietary pieces tend to be small firmware blobs or vendor binaries for niche peripherals. If closed binaries are present, common workarounds are recompiling kernels/modules for the target kernel, replacing peripherals with supported parts, or using an open autopilot bridge (mavros/ArduPilot-style) so the Linux brain stays open while control runs on an open flight stack. (old.beagleboard.org)

If confirmation of a specific file or license is needed, check the Erle GitBook and the company’s GitHub repositories first; those are the canonical places where the team published schematics, images, and ROS packages. (erlerobot.github.io)

Member Avatar for rubberman

So, is this hardware going to be open sourced? Or will it still be proprietary, requiring custom device drivers and OS versions?

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