The App-Enabled Spider

This is a guest post by the Erle-Robotics team as part of “the startup stories”, a series of blog posts about how and why innovative companies are using Ubuntu technology.

Erle-Spider as the first legged drone powered by ROS and running snappy Ubuntu Core. This smart robot with a 900 MHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 processor runs Linux natively and embeds several sensors onboard. The hexapod has been designed to meet the increasing demand of robot kits to learn, research and develop while being subject to low levels of regulation. The drone is also capable of accessing hard-to-reach places such as pipes and disaster areas, bringing cameras on board and supporting Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, as well as 3G and 4G networks to provide connectivity where needed.

The Linux 6-legged computer, powered by snappy Ubuntu Core, connects to a cloud-based App store backed by Canonical, allowing users to create and sell behaviours and drone applications. Computer vision algorithms, different dynamic models and sensors implementation are some of the features that soon will be widely available through this drone.

Erle-Spider has been launched together with Indiegogo at https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/erle-spider-the-ubuntu-drone-with-legs/ and will be delivered this Christmas for only 399 $.