Technology is evolving at a rapid speed. On a regular basis, we hear about all the AI software development and all the various affordable hardware like different processor boards, camera and GPU accelerators. I’ve been wondering if I could make use of these in association with build-your-own robotics mechanical parts to put together an affordable home robot. Perhaps a robot to provide companionship as well as look out for our safety around the home.
It would be nice if the robot could see, hear and sense the environment it is in and react appropriately. Turn on the light when it is getting dark, turn on a space heater if it gets too cold, watch for intruders, turn on TV for the news, play games, provide reminders, connect with friends or relatives, summon for help if needed, etc.
This is not quite the humanoid robot that we have all dreamed about that can do the dishes. That, I believe, is still a bit further off. The robot I am thinking about is a useful companion that is there around the clock.
After playing around with some hardware and software combinations, I came to the realization that there are just too many combinations to put a home robot together. So, to focus on developing the robot functionality, it would be nice to have a standard defined platform so I can focus on exploring the latest machine learning, neural network and AI technologies to see what intelligent robot I can come up with.
This activity sort of reminds me of the early days of personal computers before the Apple II and the IBM PC. Everyone was building different microcomputers from kits or a collection of processors and memory combinations. Perhaps it would be beneficial to have an affordable home robot platform to accelerate efforts to experiment with home robotic functions.
More details of the Home Robot Platform that I am building could be found in the article that was published in the Technology Hits Publication on Medium.
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