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 ...

Recently I bought a Minidrone Rolling Spider Parrot and used a beta version of the Tickle App ( https://tickleapp.com/en-us/ )  to control it. This was the first time I have actual programmed something that flies and it is quite addictive having something you are controlling being able to move in all directions. On the left is an example code used, essentially lift off, repeatedly move forward, turn and in the end land. I wish the mini-drone had a little bit more battery time (I would suggest getting an extra battery).  Combining with the drone and the Tickle App does add something to the experience, rather than just control it directly (though that is fun). All opinions in this blog are the Author's and should not in any way be seen as reflecting the views of any organisation the Author has any association with.