Pasadena, CA — (press release excerpt) — Evolution Robotics, Inc. today began shipping its Robot Developer Kit (RDK), an 'industrial strength' kit which includes hardware and software tools to help developers and manufacturers create autonomous personal robots for the home and workplace. The kit's native programming environment is C++ and requires a GCC compiler, and it supports the use of Linux for both the development system and target system OS platforms.

The RDK, built to support application development using the Evolution Robotics Software Platform, allows developers to create behaviors and applications for various prototypes as they move through the product design and development lifecycle. The platform has a complete robot control architecture with ready-to-use capabilities, such as following a target, detecting and avoiding obstacles, listening for voice commands and responding with speech, and exhibiting personality.

The RDK comes with easy-to-assemble aluminum hardware, plug-and-play expandable electronics, stepper or servomotors, and a copy of the Evolution Robotics Software Platform, developer tools, APIs and documentation. The platform has a complete robot control architecture with ready-to-use capabilities, such as following a target, detecting and avoiding obstacles, listening for voice commands and responding with speech, and exhibiting personality.

The RDK provides a complete range of tools for prototyping and developing the software that will run a robot. The process for writing the software for the robot is no more difficult than developing an application for a specific operating system or platform. The platform's architecture serves as the core robotic system for the robot, while using the infrastructure of Linux or whatever underlying operating system the developer chooses to use. Using the RDK, the developer writes the application code that runs on top of the architecture to control what the Robot does.

Current Evolution Robotics software development tools are designed to run on any desktop computer or laptop. The native programming environment is C++ and requires a Linux GCC compiler. The RDK's documentation provides the complete APIs to Evolution Robotics' architecture, utilities, and libraries of behaviors. You can write complete programs in C++ that work with our components to make highly robust applications for your robot.

The RDK will include . . .

• A robot control module – control up to two stepper motors or two servo motors with separate encoder inputs
  
• Sensors – nine infrared IR sensors, one USB Camera, bump sensors and a microphone
  
• Drive and power – two stepper or servo motors, differential steering and 12v battery
  
• Variable modular aluminum chassis components and plastic connectors for quick and flexible construction of hundreds of different designs
  
• World-class technical support, developer tools, and documentation including the application program interface (API) for the
  
• Behavior modules (such as speech, vision, and personality)
  
• Behavior layer
  
• Hardware layer
  
• Application utilities

The RDK also includes twelve months of free upgrades, including its upcoming object recognition module that will be available in Q2 of this year. Evolution Robotics offers the Robot Developer Kit in two configurations – one configured for lab or team use, and the other configured for individual use – at three price levels, ranging from $1495 to $9995.

Evolution Robotics will be participating at the upcoming ICRA Conference, May 11-15 in Washington DC, and the E3 Expo, May 21-24, 2002, at the Los Angeles Convention Center. The company will be demonstrating its latest technology and software accomplishments with a variety of robots.

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