Limitbit, a pioneer in AI powered companion technology, has announced the launch of its groundbreaking product, Doly, on Kickstarter. As of today, Doly has already captured the imagination of tech enthusiasts and educators, raising significant interest ahead of its official Kickstarter launch scheduled for February 13, 2024.
Doly, launch day special priced at $289, is an autonomous AI-powered companion robot that seamlessly integrates robotics, AI, and coding education into one dynamic device. It is the first of its kind to offer an open hardware and open design, powered by Raspberry Pi, allowing customization and continual evolution in capabilities.
„Doly represents a fusion of companionship, education, and technological innovation,“ says Levent Erenler, founder of Limitbit. „It’s designed to grow and adapt, offering an engaging experience for all ages and skill levels. Our open-source approach places Doly at the forefront of personal robotic innovation.“
Product highlights of Doly include:
● Self-acting Personality: A unique character that develops and evolves through interaction, offering a personalized experience.
● Edge AI Processing: Ensuring maximum privacy, Doly’s AI algorithms operate locally, without relying on cloud processing, safeguarding user data.
● STEM Education Enabler: Doly serves as an engaging tool for learning coding and robotics, catering to both beginners and advanced users.
● Open-Source Platform: Users can innovate and customize Doly, thanks to its open hardware and open design, fostering a community-driven approach to technological advancement.
● Extensive Add-On Support: Featuring a range of I/O ports, Doly offers extensive opportunities for expansion and customization, perfect for developers and hobbyists.
● 3D Printable Design: Emphasizing its customizable nature, Doly can be personalized with 3D printed parts, allowing users to tailor its appearance and functions.
Targeted towards a wide audience that includes robot lovers, parents, children, software and hardware developers, and open-source enthusiasts, Doly is positioned as the ultimate educational and interactive robot companion.
„Doly is not just a product; it’s a step towards a future where technology enhances every aspect of learning and daily living,“ added Levent Erenler. „Its ability to engage users in coding, robotics, and AI, while also serving as a companion robot, sets a new benchmark in the field.“
About Limitbit:
Based in Markham, Ontario, Limitbit is dedicated to revolutionizing AI powered companion robots. Their mission is to blend cutting-edge technology with practical, educational applications, making advanced robotics accessible to everyone.
November, 2023 – Pybricks Headquarters: Today, the Pybricks team presents the first beta release of block coding for all modern LEGO® hubs. For the first time, fans of all LEGO themes can bring their smart bricks together in a single app for endless possibilities and creativity.
Whether you want to make smart train layouts, autonomous Technic machines, interactive BOOST creatures, or super-precise SPIKE and MINDSTORMS robots, you can do it with Pybricks.
Pybricks is beginner-friendly and easy to use. There’s no need to install complicated apps or libraries either. Just go to https://beta.pybricks.com, update the firmware, and start coding.
And now for the first time, no prior Python coding experience is required. You can code with familiar but powerful blocks, and gradually switch to Python when you’re ready. The live preview makes it easy to see how your blocks translate to Python code.
Meanwhile, more seasoned builders and robotics teams will enjoy advanced features such as color sensor calibration or builtin gyro control for drive bases.
The new block coding experience is exclusively available to our supporters on Patreon. You can sign up for a monthly subscription or make a one-time pledge in our shop for lifetime access.
Python coding remains entirely free and open source, and continues to be supported by a community of developers and LEGO enthusiasts around the world. Improvements are made almost every day, with the lead developers actively engaging with the community for ideas, bug fixes, and brand new features.
Voice assistants have become a crucial component of our everyday lives in today’s technologically sophisticated society. They assist us with work, respond to our inquiries, and even provide entertainment. Have you ever wondered how voice assistants operate or how to build your own? Spencer is here to satisfy your curiosity and provide a fun DIY activity, so stop searching. This blog post will introduce you to Spencer, a voice assistant that will brighten your day with jokes and provide you with all the information you need.
Meet Spencer
Spencer is a buddy that converses with you; it is more than simply a voice assistant. It can hear you well enough to comprehend all you say. It uses its large red button as a trigger to search the internet and give you straightforward answers. It’s a wonderful addition to your everyday routine because of Spencer’s endearing nature and capacity to make you grin.
Spencer’s Features: Your Interactive Voice Assistant Companion
1. Voice Interaction
High-quality audio communication is possible because of Spencer’s microphone. It comprehends your instructions, inquiries, and chats and offers a simple and straightforward approach for you to communicate with your voice assistant. Simply talk to Spencer, and it will answer as you would expect, giving the impression that you are conversing with a genuine friend.
2. Internet Connectivity and Information Retrieval
Spencer has internet access, allowing you to access a huge information base. You may have Spencer do a real-time internet search by pushing the huge red button on his chest. Spencer can search the web and provide you clear, succinct answers, whether you need to discover the solution to a trivia question, check the most recent news headlines, or collect information on a certain issue.
3. Personalization and Customization
Being wholly original is what Spencer is all about. You are allowed to alter its features and reactions to fit your tastes. Make Spencer reflect your style and personality by altering its external elements, such as colors, decals, or even adding accessories. To further create a genuinely customized experience, you may alter its reactions, jokes, and interactions to suit your sense of humor and personal tastes.
4. Entertainment and Engagement
Spencer is aware of how important laughing is to life. It has built-in jokes and amusing replies, so talking to your voice assistant is not only educational but also interesting and fun. Spencer’s amusing features will keep you entertained and involved whether you need a quick pick-me-up or want to have a good time with friends and family.
5. Learning and Educational STEM Experience
In particular, STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) subjects are the focus of Spencer’s educational mission. You will learn useful skills in electronics, soldering, component assembly, and circuits by making Spencer. To further develop Spencer’s talents, you may go into programming, gaining practical experience with coding and computational thinking.
6. Inspiration and Creativity
Spencer acts as a springboard to spark your imagination and motivate further investigation. You may let your creativity run wild as you put together and customize your voice assistant. This do-it-yourself project promotes critical thinking, problem-solving, and invention, developing a creative and innovative mentality that may go beyond the context of making Spencer.
Recommended Age Group
Spencer is intended for those who are at least 11 years old. While the majority of the assembly procedures are simple, some, like soldering and tightening fasteners, call for prudence. Never be afraid to seek an adult for help if you need it. When using certain equipment and approaches, it is usually preferable to be guided.
Assembly Time Required
The construction of Spencer should take, on average, 4 hours to finish. However, take in mind that the timeframe may change based on your prior knowledge and expertise. Don’t worry if you’re unfamiliar with electronics! Enjoy the process, take your time, and don’t let any early difficulties get you down. You’ll grow more used to the procedures as you go along.
Skills Required
To start this DIY project, no special skills are needed. Fun and learning something new are the key goals. Your introduction to the field of electronics via Building Spencer will pique your interest in STEM fields and provide you the chance to get hands-on experience. Consider completing this assignment as the first step towards a lucrative engineering career.
Pros and Cons of Spencer
Pros of Spencer
Spencer provides an engaging and interactive experience, responding to voice commands and engaging in conversations to make you feel like you have a real companion.
With internet connectivity, Spencer can retrieve information in real-time, giving you quick answers to your questions and saving you time.
Spencer can be customized to reflect your style and preferences, allowing you to personalize its appearance, responses, and interactions.
Spencer comes with built-in jokes and entertaining responses, adding fun and amusement to your interactions with the voice assistant.
Building Spencer provides hands-on learning in electronics, soldering, circuitry, and programming, offering a valuable educational experience in STEM disciplines.
Cons of Spencer
The assembly process of Spencer may involve technical aspects such as soldering and component assembly, which can be challenging for beginners or individuals with limited experience.
Spencer heavily relies on internet connectivity to provide real-time answers and retrieve information, which means it may have limited functionality in areas with poor or no internet connection.
While Spencer offers basic voice assistant features, its capabilities may be more limited compared to advanced commercially available voice assistant devices.
Conclusion
Spencer, creating your own voice assistant is a fascinating and worthwhile endeavor. You’ll learn useful skills, expand your understanding of electronics, and enjoy the thrill of putting a complicated gadget together as you go along with the assembly process. Remember that the purpose of this project is to experience the thrill of learning, solving problems, and letting your imagination run free as well as to produce a final product. So be ready to join Spencer on this journey and discover a world of opportunities in the exciting world of voice assistants.
In 2021, Elephant Robotics launched the AI Kit. It is a robotic kit that integrates multiple functions including vision, positioning grabbing, and automatic sorting modules. For people who are new in robotics, AI Kit is a preferable tool to learn the knowledge about machine vision and AI knowledge.
With the continuous advancement of technology, Elephant Robotics has upgraded the AI Kit comprehensively, improving the quality of the hardware while optimizing the built-in algorithms and software to make the product more developable and scalable.
Machine vision is a technology that uses machines to replace the human eyes for target object recognition, judgment and measurement. Machine vision simulates human vision function by computer, and the main technology involves target image acquisition technology, image information processing technology, and target object measurement and recognition technology.
A typical machine vision system mainly consists of a vision perception unit, an image information processing and recognition unit, a processing result display unit and a vision system control unit.
Here we introduce what Elephant Robotics achieve in this upgraded AI Kit 2023.
Textbook and tutorials for robotics
To provide comphrehensive support to experimental and practical teaching, Elephant Robotics launches a textbook about machine vision programming and control. The book provides the knowledge about robotic arms, vision sensors, programming languages, etc. It is a perfect solution for K-12 edication, educational institudes, and colleges. With the help of the tutorials and textbooks, students will enjoy robotics through experiential learning with easier operation when using AI Kit 2023. And Elephant Robotics will launch the tutorials about programming the AI Kit 2023 on YouTube and Hackster continuously.
5 built-in mainstream algorithms
AI Kit 2023 uses eye-to-hand mode, it can achieve color localization by OpenCV, and frames out the colored objects, and calculates the spatial coordinate position of the objects relative to the robotic arm by the relevant point position. With the algorithms, the robotic arm on AI Kit 2023 will automatically recognize the color objects and classify to the corresponding bins.
Aruco codes are widely used to increase the amount of information mapped from the two-dimensional world to three-dimensional time. Elephant Robotics has added recognition algorithms to AI Kit 2023 to support the recognition of 4 different codes. It helps users to learn the related recognition algorithms and positioning applications.
Feature point refers to the ability to represent an image or target in an identical or very similar invariant form in other similar images containing the same scene or target. The feature points are determined by examining the differences between the pixel points and the 16 pixel points in the surrounding field, and the detection efficiency is greatly improved by the segmentation test algorithm.
This algorithm of AI Kit 2023 helps users understand the feature points of images, learn image segmentation, and save image features.
You Only Look Once (YOLO) is a very popular model architecture and object detection algorithm. Elephant Robotics builds this algorithm with the latest version in the AI Kit 2023, the YOLOv5. YOLOv5 makes further improvements on the basis of YOLOv4 algorithm, and the detectability including speed and accuracy are further enhanced. With YOLOv5, users can have a deeper understanding of artificial intelligence, such as the concept and function of neural networks and deep learning.
Shape recognition of objects is an important direction of pattern recognition. There are various representations of object shapes in computers. Based on different shapes, various shape recognition methods have been proposed, such as methods based on Fourier descriptors, principal component analysis, and invariance distance. In shape recognition, it is very important to identify the pattern features on which the recognition is based.
Hardware upgrades
In terms of hardware, AI Kit 2023 adds different sizes of parts boxes to assist the robotic arm to better classify objects. Secondly, AI Kit 2023 used the camera with higher accuracy and lightness adjustment to make the robotic arm more efficient in recognition. Elephant Robotics has also upgraded the suction pump installed at the end of the robotic arm, so that it has higher adaptability and stability when working with different robotic arms.
Software updates
Elephant Robotics develops a built-in visualization software and provides customization methods in the AI Kit 2023. In this software, users can directly select the different algorithms to perform different functions and change the coordinates. The visual interface helps users quickly identify, access and manipulate data, and enables interaction and manipulation in a variety of ways. AI Kit 2023 is more user-friendly now, evern beginner who are new in programming or has no knowledge of code can also use it with several clicks.
Many educational institutions and colleges have already adopted AI Kit 2023 as an educational tool for professional or laboratory use, enabling students to learn to better understand artificial intelligence, robotic programming, and automation.Elephant Robotics is focusing on developing more and better robotics solutions and kits to provide more comprehensive conditions for the technology and education industry and deepen the application of robotics in education and research.
Root robot is uniquely designed to help kids learn coding at home and in school
BEDFORD, Mass., June 20, 2019 /PRNewswire/ — iRobot Corp. (NASDAQ: IRBT), the leader in consumer robots, has announced the addition of the Root coding robot to its product lineup through the acquisition of Root Robotics. With technology initially developed by a founding group within the Wyss Institute at Harvard University, Root is a fun and easy-to-use educational robot that uniquely teaches coding and 21st century problem-solving skills to children as young as four years old. This acquisition supports iRobot’s plans to diversify its educational robot product offerings, further demonstrating its commitment to make robotic technology more accessible to educators, students and parents.
The Root coding robot is a two-wheeled, mobile platform. The robot operates on flat surfaces at home, like tables, floors, and countertops, and vertical surfaces in a classroom, like a magnetic whiteboard. When paired with the companion mobile application, users can instruct Root to draw artwork, scan colors, play music, respond to touch and sound, climb whiteboard walls, and explore the fundamentals of robotics. Root uses three levels of coding language, from simple graphical blocks for young children to full text coding for more advanced users.
„The acquisition of Root Robotics allows iRobot to broaden the impact of its STEM efforts with a commercially available, educational robotic platform already being used by educators, students and parents,“ said Colin Angle, chairman and CEO of iRobot. „Root also helps increase the reach of iRobot’s educational robot line by offering a proven system for people of all ages, including students in elementary school.“
„The Root coding robot is an incredibly powerful tool for learning to code because it intuitively scales to users‘ abilities,“ said Zee Dubrovsky, co-founder of Root Robotics who will now become general manager of Educational Robots at iRobot. „A four-year-old can begin coding Root using simple pictures and symbols that translate to robot actions. Once a child has mastered graphical coding, they can seamlessly toggle to the next two levels, which introduce hybrid coding, followed by full text coding. This scalable approach is what has been missing from other educational coding robots.“
The acquisition of Root Robotics is not expected to contribute materially to iRobot’s 2019 financial performance. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
About iRobot Corp. iRobot®, the leading global consumer robot company, designs and builds robots that empower people to do more both inside and outside of the home. iRobot® created the home robot cleaning category with the introduction of its Roomba® Robot Vacuum in 2002. Today, iRobot® is a global enterprise that has sold more than 25 million robots worldwide. iRobot’s product line, including Roomba® vacuuming robots and the Braava® family of mopping robots, feature proprietary technologies and advanced concepts in cleaning, mapping and navigation. iRobot® engineers are building an ecosystem of robots and technologies to enable the smart home. For more information about iRobot®, please visit www.irobot.com.
For iRobot Investors Certain statements made in this press release that are not based on historical information are forward-looking statements which are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. This press release contains express or implied forward-looking statements relating to iRobot Corporation’s expectations concerning management’s plans, objectives and strategies and the expectations for the financial contributions from the acquisition. These statements are neither promises nor guarantees, but are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those contemplated in these forward-looking statements. Existing and prospective investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date hereof. iRobot undertakes no obligation to update or revise the information contained in this press release, whether as a result of new information, future events or circumstances or otherwise. For additional disclosure regarding these and other risks faced by iRobot, see the disclosure contained in our public filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission including, without limitation, our most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K.
