Here is another robot kit that teaches your kids basics of coding. The KEYESTUDIO Smart Robot Car is made for Arduino. It can be programmed to avoid obstacles and track lines. It can also follow thanks to its ultrasonic sensor.
In the past few years, we have covered plenty of fancy robotic dogs here. These videos from Mech-Dickel Robotics show you what it takes to build your own. The goal is to turn mechDOG into a commercial kit in collaboration with RobotShop.
Meet Roxo: a robot that can deliver your orders. This autonomous delivery robot from FedEx comes with 360-degree sensing. It has turn signals, lights, and signaling screens to communicate with cyclists, pedestrians, and vehicles.
Here is another Raspberry Pi robot that you can use for more serious programming. The YB Raspberry Pi Robot comes with a Depth Camera and is ready for SLAM navigation. It has a 1080p camera with 120-degree field of view. It is driven on a 10,000mAh battery.
In the past few years, we have covered plenty of robots that can mimic human facial expressions. This video from Columbia Engineering shows an animatronic robotic face driven with learned models. Most current methods involved pre-programmed expressions but those are limited.
For this project, a robotic face with soft skin was used. It has a vision based self-supervised learning framework for facial mimicry. As the researchers explain:
By decomposing the learning process into a generative model and an inverse model, our framework can be trained using a single motor babbling dataset. Comprehensive evaluations show that our method enables accurate and diverse face mimicry across diverse human subjects.
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Picking rocks is a common task for farmers. TerraClear’s Robotic Rock Picker is made to handle it effectively. It can pick 400 rocks per hour with a speed range of up to 3mph. It can pick rocks from 6 to 24 inches, weighing up to 1500lbs. The Rock Picker works on a compact track loader or skid steer. It will soon work on front-end loaders on tractors.
In the past few years, we have seen plenty of cool robot dogs. The ChiTu Quadruped Robot is also worth a look. It is a 12DOF robot with powerful hobbyist servo motors and uses a Raspberry Pi 4B as its brain. The below video shows it moving on a desk.
Meet the FANUC SR-20iA SCARA Robot: another high payload robot that can take on pick & place tasks. It has 1100mm reach and 20kg payload. It has 300 & 400mm vertical strokes and +/ 0.02mm repeatability. These robots have a compact footprint and slim profile.
Meet the Bolt Mini Model Move: a lightweight 6-axis high-speed arm with a reach of 3 feet and 8kg payload that can perform repetitive moves with high precision. The Bolt Mini Model Mover can be used as a standalone system or synced with a camera shooting robot.
Here is another robot arm kit that can introduce your kids to coding and help them graduate to Python. The SunFounder PiArm has 3 parts (shovel bucket, hanging clips, and electromagnet). It can be controlled with a joystick or through Ezblock.
