Your very own Wall-E? It may not be too futuristic a prospect if Intel has anything to do with it. The company just showed off a DIY kit at the Code Conference that will let you 3D-print your very own robot for $1600.
Have a 3D printer? Or at least access to one? You’re pretty much halfway there. The at-home robot maker will be buyable online at 21stCenturyRobot.com later this year. It will include the designs for the hardware that you can make if you have a 3D printer you can use. It will also give you the moving parts you can’t print, like motors and wires and processors and batteries. The cost is relatively low because Re/Code says it runs on Intel Edison—a cheap computer on a chip. If it were fitted with a better brain, like say an i5 processor, it would run more like $16,000.
http://www.21stcenturyrobot.com/
And the robot is supposed to get better as people start to create and tinker with them—it’s open-source, so developers can build programs and apps for it and ‘bot builders can download them at will. Robots will be able to do things like translate languages, or deliver a beer, or get the mail. Anything! Your open source Intel-powered robot is your oyster. And for not that much money, relatively speaking. [Re/code]
http://recode.net/2014/05/28/heeeeeeres-jimmy-intels-3-d-printed-robot-will-hit-the-market-later-this-year/
