In today’s busy schedule everyone is short on time. There is a need for a reliable person who can manage our daily activities and help us to lead a simple and easy life. This need made me and my team comprising of Akshay, Suhas and Suhas to come up with a smart and versatile robot which could fill this void. And thus, this project titled 'Design and development of smart robots to serve as personal assistants' and codenamed 'Mr. Robot' was born. What started as my final year engineering thesis project in 2015, I believe today has grown much bigger than that.
Diving into technicalities, we set out to build a robot which is versatile in nature and whose capabilities can be increased with time. On the hardware side, we made use of an SBC named Odroid XU4 to act as brain supported closely by an Arduino Mega. We incorporated sensors such as Microsoft Kinect, IR, ultrasonic sensors etc to help robot gain knowledge of the external world. Mobility for the robot was provided using differential drive system powered by two high torque motors. The robot also has an arm for manipulation. On the software side, the whole architecture was based on ROS.
Speaking about robot's capabilities, the robot could move autonomously, pick and place objects and also interact with humans through an intelligent interactive voice system. Check out the playlist below to get a small glimpse of some of the capabilities of Mr. Robot.
Last but not the least, I am grateful for the support provided by my professors especially Dr. T N Nagabhushan for this project and also to our sponsor Microsoft.