Way cooler looking than the LEGO Mindstorms NXT brick. I'd be interested in how customizable the base will be.
Turn Your Smartphone Into A Robot
21–30 of 50 posts
Re: Turn Your Smartphone Into A Robot
#22This type of thing could actually spark a robotics revolution. One of the large barrier to entry to robotics is that it is generally built on costly specialty hardware running costly specialty software. Some people have used laptops as 'brains' for robots but they are bulky and often still quite costly. Because of their size, long battery life, gps support, camera, touchscreen, microphone, accelerometer and potential…
This also true for other areas of embedded computing.It certainly offers a costs reduction and a lot less work on the hardware.
But the biggest impact would be on the software side. By offering a standard platform with alot of performance to spare at low cost, Embedded software could be written in higher level languages(lua/lua-jit seems interesting), use much more standard libraries, and higher level libraries.
So we might see a creativity boom in embedded devices, just as we saw when scripting languages started being used for web development.
Re: Turn Your Smartphone Into A Robot
#23This type of thing could actually spark a robotics revolution. One of the large barrier to entry to robotics is that it is generally built on costly specialty hardware running costly specialty software. Some people have used laptops as 'brains' for robots but they are bulky and often still quite costly. Because of their size, long battery life, gps support, camera, touchscreen, microphone, accelerometer and potential…
I disagree on "sparking a robotics revolution". It is akin to suggesting that Songsmith sparked a music revolution. Just because something is easier to do does not make it revolutionary, nor does it necessarily advance the field.
The barriers to entry that you speak of do not exist, unless you consider an Arduino, a motor shield, some sensors, cables and a breadboard costly speciality hardware. Take a look at www.sparkfun.com or www.pololu.com, all the things that come with an iPhone you can get in form of easily programmable modules. Need GPS? Buy a gps module. Need wireless communication? Get BT or XBEE.
Sure, building a robot this way is not as simple as plugging in your smartphone and dragging and dropping some blocks thorough the GUI, but it is not that difficult either, you learn more, and it does not get boring quickly.
Re: Turn Your Smartphone Into A Robot
#24There is something related to this for lego robots and android phones, Google for "do androids dream of lego mindstorms"?.
The robots + augmented reality games are a great idea.
Re: Turn Your Smartphone Into A Robot
#25seriously, I don't get it. There are tons of off-the-shelf electronic kits that already do this (ARM, PIC, AVAR, etc)... And most of this is just simple logic. Follow a light beam, follow color, bla, bla, bla... Anything really useful, to me, appears one would need a bit more than a smart phone. Honda's robot comes to mind and that quadraped that supposedly is suppose to help military carry heavy things through tough terrain.
Re: Turn Your Smartphone Into A Robot
#26seriously, I don't get it. There are tons of off-the-shelf electronic kits that already do this (ARM, PIC, AVAR, etc)... And most of this is just simple logic. Follow a light beam, follow color, bla, bla, bla... Anything really useful, to me, appears one would need a bit more than a smart phone. Honda's robot comes to mind and that quadraped that supposedly is suppose to help military carry heavy things through tough…
A smart phone has a camera (possibly two), a microphone, a display, speakers, and WiFi. I'm thinking it would make it quite fun to drive remotely, perhaps on a table top for video conferencing.
Re: Turn Your Smartphone Into A Robot
#27seriously, I don't get it. There are tons of off-the-shelf electronic kits that already do this (ARM, PIC, AVAR, etc)... And most of this is just simple logic. Follow a light beam, follow color, bla, bla, bla... Anything really useful, to me, appears one would need a bit more than a smart phone. Honda's robot comes to mind and that quadraped that supposedly is suppose to help military carry heavy things through tough…
The Romo is something a primary school kid could assemble.
I'm actually doing various projects (robotics-related and non-related) with AVR and Arduino, and they are definitely not primary-school-friendly.
Re: Turn Your Smartphone Into A Robot
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you expand on that please? Audio-jack interface?
They are using the audio jack to send command data to the robot base. Notice how the iphone is not connected through a dock or 30-pin connector. Very clever indeed! Making a "real" iphone accessory through the 30-pin connector is simply not possible for hobbyists/small outfits. This also makes their communication interface with the robot somewhat portable. I like :D
The audio port is definitely the right way to interface cheaply (and across different mobile phones).
If anyone's interested, there _is_ now a way to interface RS-232 devices from an iPhone using an Apple-approved cable:
http://www.makershed.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=MSRP...
From what I've heard, negotiations with Apple took a lot of time and were quite "complex". Also, the cable unfortunately costs 80$ (because of the custom, "secret" DRM chip enabling the interface). Which goes to prove that the audio jack goes a long way!
Re: Turn Your Smartphone Into A Robot
#29HNer, Matt Might, did a quick hack (weekend-type) to control a scribbler robot via BlueTooth via smartphone a while back [1]. Given that ROS (Robot Operating System) is being ported to Android, the capabilities for these systems are going to explode! Soon enough, you'll have phone-based robots that have all the accouterments: 3D perception, localization, etc.
[1] http://www.hizook.com/blog/2011/01/12/ipad-and-iphone-contro...
Re: Turn Your Smartphone Into A Robot
#30Didn't we see something like this at Google I/O? I wonder if that's where they got the idea.