Robotic Open Platform (ROP) aims to make hardware designs of robots available under an Open Hardware license to the entire robotic community. It provides CAD drawings, electric schemes and the required documentation to build their own robot. In the near future, standard electromechanic interfaces between the various robot components will be presented to enable the possibility to combine hardware components of various groups into one robot. By making the robots modular, users are encouraged to develop their own components that can be shared with the community.
In software, the Robot Operating System (ROS) is nowadays acknowledged as a standard software platform and is used by numerous (research) institutions. This open source software is available to everyone and by sharing knowledge with the community there is no need to ‘reinvent the wheel’, hence drastically speeding up development. Similarly, Robotic Open Platform (ROP) functions as a platform to share hardware designs available to all research groups within the community.
