To prepare for summer projects to do on rainy days, with kids or not, take a look at the TeRK robot kit project. TeRK, which stands for Telepresence Robot Kit, aims to make educational robotics fun, affordable, and accessible by helping people make robots from parts easily found or bought and using “recipes” or instructions found on their web site. These simple robots, once built and turned on, will automatically search for a wireless network and connect to the Internet. Drive the robot around with a web browser and Internet connection and control your robot from anywhere. The software provided is free for use with the TeRK robots, and is open-source so you can modify it or write your own programs and share your project with the TeRK community.

At the heart of each TeRK robot is a unique controller called Qwerk that combines a computer (with a Linux operating system that can use any computer language )with the software and electronics necessary to control the robot’s motors, cameras and other devices. It features a field programmable gate array (FPGA) to control motors, servos, cameras, amplifiers and other devices. It also accepts USB peripheral devices, such as Web cameras and GPS receivers.

Unlike other educational robot kits, TeRK is not sold as a complete set of parts. Recipes allow for a variety of robots to be built with parts commonly available. The robots can take many forms, from a three-wheeled model with a mounted camera to a flower loaded with infrared sensors and that can play catch.

TeRK was developed by Illah Nourbakhsh, an associate professor of robotics, and his team at the Community Robotics, Education and Technology Empowerment Lab at CMU. The project got financial help from Google, Microsoft and Intel.

Recipes, software, technical support and other information: www.terk.ri.cmu.edu

Qwerk controller available for sale from Charmed Labs: www.charmedlabs.com