Linux-based Katana Intelligent Robotic Arm

Posted 25 Nov 2008 at 17:29 UTC by steve

LinuxDevices.com reports on a new robotic arm developed by Neuronics AG of Zurich, Switzerland. This new arm, called the Katana Robotic Arm, is designed for use in industry, production, lab automation, and research. The arm is controlled by a single-board computer that includes a Freescale MPC5200 CPU and six TI TMS320 32bit motor controllers. The system relies on the CAN bus architecture. The C++ communication and motion libraries that control the arm are open source allowing extensive customization not possible with traditional proprietary industrial robots. The libraries also include Python bindings. Need more ways to interface to it? How about a SOAP server, an XML-RPC interface, an AJAX-based web interface, a CAN interface, and a Linux command line shell interface. The system runs on top of Linux and was developed with the Denx Embedded Linux Development Kit. The price tag for all this open source goodness is $24,900 USD.