Robots and Physical Computing

In the previous blog posts for this 'series' "It is a good time...."  Post 1  looked at the hardware unpinning some of this positive rise in robots; Post 2  looked at social robots; Post 3  looked at a collection of small robots; Post 4 looked at further examples of small robots Robots, such as the forthcoming Buddy and JIBO, will be based some established open sourceand other technologies. Jibo will be based around various technologies including Electron and JavaScript (for more details see:  http://blog.jibo.com/2015/07/29/jibo-making-development-readily-accessible-to-all-developers/ ). Buddy is expected to be developed around tools for Unity3d, Arduino and OpenCV, and support Python, C++, C#, Java and JavaScript (for more details see http://www.roboticstrends.com/article/customize_your_buddy_companion_robot_with_this_software_development_kit ).  This post contin ues with some of the software being used with the smaller robots.  A number ...

In the previous two posts, mentioned the low-cost small devices are opening up new opportunities for robotics ( http://robotsandphysicalcomputing.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/it-is-good-time-part-one-introduction.html ) and the rise of social robots in the home ( http://robotsandphysicalcomputing.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/it-is-good-time-2-social-robots.html ) was considered. In this post and the next, 'small' robots (my phrase), relatively low cost robots, are considered. A few examples are discussed. Picobot One of the most interesting small robots on the market is the PicoBot from 4Tronix ( http://4tronix.co.uk/blog/?p=708 ).  These are small, relatively low-cost robots with a good range of basic sensors based around Arduino. A nice feature is they are quick to put together (5-10 minutes each for the two above).  The size, time to build and the radio modules make them an interesting option for playing with swarm robotics - if only I had the money. Don't let the swarm ro...

Wonder Workshop ( https://www.makewonder.com/ ) produce the  robots Dash and Dot robots (see picture above). It is hard not to be charmed by these robots, they are cute, easy to use, download the Apps and you are ready to go almost out of the box - and add to this an easy to use but fairly powerful tool for developing programming. At the time of writing the software is only available for IOS but there are plans for Android.  Blockly, available as one of apps, can be used to program the robots. It is a simple looking graphical language (simpler looking but similar to Scratch). A simple example (shown opposite) where Dash (the bigger of the two) does things such as  moves forward,  going left, lights change to orange, , left ear changes colour, head moves forward and it roars like a dinosaur. It relatively easy to then add loops and test (such as checking if it's 'friend' Dot is in view). Below is a very short video of Dash moving around until it 'sees' Dot. ...