Kickstarter, a crowd-funding website for business startups and creative projects, has become increasingly popular since its in launch in April 2009. Kickstarter funds an extreme diversity of endeavors ranging from indie films, music and books, to journalism, video games, tech-startups and food-related projects. They host a lot of entrepreneurs' technology projects, including ones that are open hardware/open software! Here are the highlights on two projects I found very interesting.
Hands down, the coolest project being funded by Kickstarter right now isStompy: The Giant, Rideable Walking Robot. Josh Mings wrote about this awesome robot on the SolidSmack blog which caught my eye. Stompy is an open-source, 18ft wide, 4,000 pound, 6-legged hydraulic robot that you can ride. The 'bot is actually being built close to home - in Somerville, Massachusetts - by a robotics class. Three engineers (along with one TA) are teaching the 15-person Robotics Intensive: Rideable Hexapod class.
Together, these 19 individuals will build the giant robot over the course of four months - their Kickstarter project has earned nearly $100k in one month. I have to admit, I'd take a ride on Stompy. Learn more about Project Hexapod on their blog.
Keeping with the robotics theme, there's another successfully (130%) funded project, Hexy the Hexapod. Hexy was created by recent college grad Joseph Schlesinger, who founded the company ArcBotics. Hexy, designed to be a teaching tool for advanced robotics, is a functional and minimalistic robot that comes with step-by-step instructions so that anyone can make it. Hexy is also completely open source, so all the files are available online for free, public use and you can program Hexy to do cute tricks. Hexy has already received lots of great publicity including blog articles on Wired andPC World. Hexy is scheduled to be released in the fall and, as it is a teaching tool, it will be inexpensive at $250 unassembled and $500 assembled. The things Hexy can do are brilliant and rumor has it he can “play” electric guitar. Check out Hexy at thecompany's website.
These are just 2 of the more than 60,700 projects that have been launched on Kickstarter, and more than 4,000 are live now. While some provide a good laugh, others will leave you awestruck. It's really incredible to see what fellow Innovators are doing.
Have you ever used Kickstarter? How did it work out for you? Let us know [email protected].