#1 Open, mature hardware solution

[Edward Faulkner]

You guys should talk to Maslab:

http://maslab.csail.mit.edu

They have an open hardware and software design that's
really nice. It's been iteratively improved over the
past several years for their annual contest.

I know they've expressed interest before in trying to
get an open source community interested in their hardware.

Having watched their design evolve I'm sure it would
save you considerable effort if you could adapt some or
all of it to your purposes.