What's New

• Robotic Eye-Hand Coordination

• Object Tracking using Visual Filters
• Pepé le Bôt Auditions for the Ballet
• Hardware and Software used on Pi and Peppy

Greetings Humans

The Pi Robot project began in December 2005. The first year involved testing several different body plans, microcontrollers, sensors, servos and drive motors. Attention was then turned to developing a modular programming frame work for coordinating sensory data and motor commands into autonomous behaviors.

For example, Pi Robot is pretty good at tracking a moving object. He can also move his arms to point at a ball in three dimensional space. Pi's most complex behavior to date involves throwing a ball then moving across a room to pick it up again. His newest sensory system is an all-seeing omnidirectional vision system. And his newest perceptual ability is to use this system to determine what room he is in as he roams about the house.

Recently Pi has been joined by two new robot friends: Peppy and Rovio. Peppy (on the left) is Pi's smaller home built cousin while Rovio (to the right) is a commercial robot made by WowWee. Both robots have starred in their own videos such as this one showing off Peppy's omnidirection vision system and this one of Rovio escaping from a cluttered room.

In late 2009, Peppy acquired a pair of arms and a pan and tilt head. I am still trying to figure out how to integrate the omnivisual system into the new body pan. In the meantime, a colleague suggested that to celebrate his transformation, Peppy should acquire the more illustrious title of Pepé le Bôt.

Click the links on the left to see more pictures and videos of Pi, Peppy and Rovio. Or sign up for the Pi Robot eLetter mailing list so you can be alerted to new updates to this website.

Cybernetically yours,
Pi Robot