ZMP Inc, a Japanese home robot developer, will sell the source code for "nuvo," a two-legged humanoid robot developed and sold by the company, exclusively for research purposes.
Hisashi Taniguchi, CEO of ZMP, explains the aim of the program, showing the two-legged robots, "nuvo" and "e-nuvo."
ZMP announced this "nuvo Source Code Disclosure Program" August 6, 2008.
Users (universities, companies and individuals) of the program will participate in the community operated by ZMP and share the research results obtained through usage of the source code. ZMP aims to accelerate various researches on robots through this program.
The recently announced program is a package of a nuvo robot, the source code, the electrical circuit diagram, three days of training and an ID for participating in the nuvo community. The price is ¥257,250 (approx US$2,350, including tax).
The participants are limited to those who use the program for researches, and they are required to sign an NDA (non disclosure agreement) with ZMP. The number of robots is limited to 50, and application will be closed as soon as the quorum is reached.
ZMP has been engaged in sale and development of entertainment robots including nuvo and music robot "mioro," and at the same time engaged in an education business that includes providing robotic teaching materials to universities and research institutes.
The "e-nuvo," for example, is well known among automobile manufacturers, etc and is used for employee training. The recent program is part of its education business, but it goes far beyond that.
ZMP's CEO Hisashi Taniguchi explains the reasons for the source code disclosure as follows.
"Expansion of the home robot market is reaching a deadlock. Assessment of a killer application that brings forth a breakthrough is becoming more crucial than ever. We hesitated to disclose the source code, our intellectual property, but we wanted to spur the research and development of robots by involving external human resources, because the capability of ZMP, a venture business with small workforces, is limited."
The robot development has reached a certain level of maturity in terms of hardware. Development of software, including applications and services, will be the mainstream for the coming years, according to Taniguchi.
"We would appreciate participation by IT companies and their employees who are skilled in working out new services and business models," he said.
However, the usage of the source code is limited to research alone and some of the details, such as licensing for other applications, have not been clarified. In the future, in case the research results are used in business, "We'd like to assign a license in proportion to the contribution," Taniguchi said.
In this program, the source code of "N2 CORE," a core module of the robot, and "N2 Controller," an underlying software that controls user interface, are disclosed, as well as the source code of a setting application operated by APL and PC intended for N2 CORE and an application for control by mobile phones, remote controllers and voices.
Almost all of the software code will be disclosed, excluding the voice recognition code, etc that involve other companies," according to ZMP. More than 90% of the code are written in C++, while the rest are written in C.
The number of steps has not been disclosed, but the number of source files is close to 200 just for the N2 CORE and N2 Controller, according to sources.
The display of the sample application for controlling the nuvo from a PC.
Following the disclosure of source code, more flexible software development, including exclusive applications running on nuvo and PCs as well as middlewares running between applications, will be possible.
The first users will be the laboratory of Professor Yoshiki Matsuo of the Computer Science Department of Tokyo University of Technology and Sekiguchi Laboratory (lecturer: Akinori Sekiguchi) of the same department, who have decided to introduce this program for education and research.
Matsuo says he decided to introduce the nuvo because "its degree of perfection is high and the platform is stable as more than three years have past since it was released. In addition, the underlying technologies such as Windows Embedded CE and CAN employed by nuvo have wide applications."
"I expect new ideas for the utilization of robots from students in software-related fields who are good in ICT and games," he said.
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