Why is it special?

TORP is the first fully opened and cooperative robotic project around the world. However, this is not the only important feature in TORP. The TORP robots strongly differs from other robotics projects around the world because its carries a completely new answer to the question "what is a robot?".

The TORP robot concept

In the TORP point of view, a robot is a collection of independent, replaceable and specialized parts (modules) that are as self-contained as possible and that jointly produces an artificial creature. For example, lets consider an arm of the robot. In a TORP robot, all the mechanics, electrical devices and processing units necessary to assure that the robot arm can execute its functions must be fully contained in the very robot arm. The robot, so, can be seen as a communication network that hosts a society of independent mechanical-electrical parts. All parts must collect all information (internal and external) that can be important to perform its own tasks as well as should offer all its services to the robot network. In order to assure that these parts can be capable to suitably and harmonically cooperate to produce a more complex entity, some electrical, mechanical, computational and communication requirements (the TORP Specification Set) must be simultaneously respected by all TORP robots.

TORP robots characteristics

All robots that follow the TORP Specification Set share some important and unique characteristics:

1. Robot can be cooperatively constructed. Absolutely anyone around the world can on-line contribute with the robot projects in all its dimensions. TORP provides the first fully cooperative approach of this kind around the world;
2. Robot can share its parts with anyone around the world. When establishing a standard and open platform, TORP allows the possibility of geographically distant (and maybe unknown) partners to jointly develop a robot with new abilities. For example, if a person or laboratory in Asia has a particular interest and expertise in developing a robotic hand, this hand can easily be plugged in an arm constructed by another group in Europe. Moreover, this sharing parts capability stimulates the evaluation of modules, guiding the selection of parts technologies. TORP is the first standard robotics open platform around the world that allows this kind of feature;
3. Robot parts are fully reusable. Different versions of robots parts can be fully functional in the same robot. We can assure, for example, that an old robot head will be fully functional with a newer version robot chest. This is not an usual feature in robotics. Moreover, TORP Specification Set establishes that the insertion of new modules in the robot can be done without turn it off. In this way, the parts replacement in robots becomes extremely easy and also the auto-replacement of parts in robots becomes possible.

Due to all these reasons we consider TORP an important advance in robotics.

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