Robots and Physical Computing

Robot insect for the home, Antbo, started as a crowdfunded project (see the video below) ( https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/antbo-an-insect-robot-anyone-can-build-steam-diy#/ ) from the DFRobot Robotics.  This is post is not really a fully review, just some initial thoughts, as I haven't spent enough time playing with it; but what I have seen so far does interest me. The price during the crowdsource was around the $59-$69 which because of the range of sensors and features does seem reasonable. The screenshot below is taken from the funding website discussing some of the features. An intriguing point in the literature is the self-learning - using 30 neuron neural network – I would love to have more details of this one. At the moment I have been controlling it through the iPad app which gives a variety of modes - directly driving; setting it on patrol (first picture below); drawing a path on screen for it to follow (third picture below) and even voic...

I will start with a confession, I only had about 2 1/2 hours at BETT 2017  due to external time pressures so to say I didn't yet a chance for a good (or even a bad) look around is an understatement; so I am not reviewing the show just a few notes on what I did manage to see. STEAM Village First and mostly, it was great to talk to so many people, only few I had met face to face previously, about robots, micro:bits, Raspberry Pis and coding. Most of this happen in the relatively small (compared to the event space) STEAM village and nearby stalls. It was great to see the strong presence of both Raspberry Pi and Micro:Bit Foundation, along the variety of different activities and example usage of both, with Code Club (I know it is part of Raspberry Pi Foundation) there was well. This was all alongside some other companies Four of these stuck in my mind. 1. DFRobot ( https://www.dfrobot.com/ ) with their range of Arduino-based robots and non-programmable kits....