Programming robotic arms and systems has been a daunting and complicated task until now, thanks to the open-source movement, ROS, and Python.
There was a time when the open-source movement was perceived negatively and considered a rebellious element operated outside of the commercial norms of licensing. However, that started to change in 2014 when Elon Musk made all of Tesla’s patents open-source. This was done to reduce the development curve for other organizations and increase technological advancement for the electric vehicle industry. As a matter of fact, Henry Ford did something similar 100 years prior when he formed the Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Association to cross-license and share patents. Then came Microsoft with MS-DOS, and we moved into a strict period of licensing for proprietary operation and control systems. There's a lot more history here, but I don't want to bore you; software started as open-source, created and shared by academics from the 1950s through the 1970s.
Fast-forward, Tesla started a chain reaction and a movement toward decentralization. In 2007, the Robotics Institute Willow Garage in Silicon Valley developed ROS. ROS enables flexibility – a path for companies to move away from proprietary and costly legacy robotics systems. ROS facilitates cheaper and faster robotics deployments, allowing companies to scale much faster - think Amazon or the Giga Factory.
Today, Amazon has 520k ROS-enabled, open-source robotics systems in operation, which continues to grow. The future is open-source, but why you might ask? Because it fosters innovation, scalability, and cost reduction. Python is becoming the cornerstone of engineering and manufacturing. The industries seeing the most significant advancements through open-source and Python include Robotics, Simulation, Data Science, AI, Machine Vision, and Server or Data Center Applications. One of the conduits at the center of this revolution is GitHub. GitHub has over 100M users worldwide. It’s a repository for code where users create, share, and collaborate.
Recognizing this trend, Lab Resources partnered with uFactory to bring open-source robotics to the classroom to help instructors teach students the future of technology today. The uFactory 6 Lite is an open-source robotic arm built on the ROS/ROS2 platforms. The 6
Lite can be programmed with Python, Blockly, C++, or a PLC. In the spirit of open-source, it’s scalable and more cost-effective than any industrial collaborative robot on the market. For less than $10k, you can bring the 6 Lite with curriculum and training into your classroom. This will put your students ahead of the learning curve and immerse them in technology that will drive the future of industry and robotics.
Contact us today to see a demonstration of the uFactory 6 Lite, an industrial-level cobot. We can help you immerse your students in the programming framework for robotics that’s experiencing rapid growth and will power the future of robotics.
Package Includes:
xArm 6Lite Collaborative Robot
Gripper
Vacuum Gripper
Controller
Curriculum
