Turn Your Smartphone Into A Robot

This type of thing could actually spark a robotics revolution. One of the large barrier to entry to robotics is that it is generally built on costly specialty hardware running costly specialty software.<p>Some people have used laptops as 'brains' for robots but they are bulky and often still quite costly.<p>Because of their size, long battery life, gps support, camera, touchscreen, microphone, accelerometer and potential lower price, smartphones are surprisingly well suited as commodity platform for robotics.

I already got to play with it, its super fun and works just like you want it to. It's versatile enough to go over cracks and stuff in doorways and the video streaming is very smooth. This is an awesome project to back.

The audio-jack based interface is very clever- the whole package is wonderfully simple and straightforward. I hope that mass production can bring the price down a bit, though.

Maybe this is the revolution we need to give a chance to the next generation to have fun programmable robot. I was promised that as a kid and I still don't have it!<p>Contributed!

I don't see what they need $32,000 for. There was another robot project on Kickstarter a while back that was successfully funded (the Bilibot: <a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/147564168/bilibot-an-affordable-robotics-platform?ref=live" rel="nofollow">http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/147564168/bilibot-an-aff...</a> ) for a lot less.<p>The hardware required to prototype the Bilibot is a lot more expensive than to prototype one of these Romos, so I don't get what they need 6 times the funding of the Bilibot project for. $78 per Romo seems fine, but the overall goal seems a bit high.

Give me a robot that lets me fight other robots. And can I control this from my iPad rather than a second iPhone?

HNer, Matt Might, did a quick hack (weekend-type) to control a scribbler robot via BlueTooth via smartphone a while back [1]. Given that ROS (Robot Operating System) is being ported to Android, the capabilities for these systems are going to explode! Soon enough, you'll have phone-based robots that have all the accouterments: 3D perception, localization, etc.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.hizook.com/blog/2011/01/12/ipad-and-iphone-controlled-robot-toys#MattMight" rel="nofollow">http://www.hizook.com/blog/2011/01/12/ipad-and-iphone-contro...</a>

Wow.. I was hoping to do something similar with raspberry pi (<a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.raspberrypi.org/</a>). I guess my phone can do the trick as well.

Done! I've made several half starts at robotics projects, mostly based on Arduino but I always felt exasperated at how weak they were compared to the smartphone in my pocket, which I can already program over a zillion standard interfaces. Getting an Arduino kit with the equivalent of this functionality would cost hundreds of dollars ... this is a steal.

There is something related to this for lego robots and android phones, Google for "do androids dream of lego mindstorms"?. The robots + augmented reality games are a great idea.

Way cooler looking than the LEGO Mindstorms NXT brick. I'd be interested in how customizable the base will be.

Great idea, love the simplicity of the interface (audio jack), just bought one. Best of luck guys

Didn't we see something like this at Google I/O? I wonder if that's where they got the idea.

Very cool. Looks like something quite doable using Android device + IOIO board + Arduino

I love this idea ... I can't wait to use it to spy on people.... ;)

I've seen this in person and it's v cool - just ordered mine!

Can I have it laying flat with a mirror above the camera?

seriously, I don't get it. There are tons of off-the-shelf electronic kits that already do this (ARM, PIC, AVAR, etc)... And most of this is just simple logic. Follow a light beam, follow color, bla, bla, bla... Anything really useful, to me, appears one would need a bit more than a smart phone. Honda's robot comes to mind and that quadraped that supposedly is suppose to help military carry heavy things through tough terrain.

Super cool!

Finallyyyyy! *breaks open piggy bank

Why use the proprietary connectors for this? Audio in and out should be more than sufficient an interface for such a simple platform..