PiBot: The Raspberry Pi-Based Robot

Give the maker community a board with computing power and IO ports and you’ll get a robot not before too long. This already happened in the Arduino community. We eventually got the Arduino Robot which even has its own competition now. The Raspberry Pi community is walking down the same path with many projects related to robotics. A notable project is the PiBot (see Videos 1 and 2). Besides the Raspberry Pi board, this two-wheeled segway-like robot embeds a bunch of sensors including a HD camera with full pan and tilt control. The open source software will include support for streaming and facial recognition. Voice recognition and audio synthesis are also on the menu. Last, the PiBot has been designed to be extended with add-on modules: GPS, Compass, Gyro to name a few.

If you want to support the project or get a PiBot you’ll have a chance soon with the Kickstarter campaign. Expect it this summer. The main target is the education sector. The PiBot team is already spending a lot of energy organizing workshops for both children and adults (see Video 3). They have workshops planned in San Francisco, LA, the UK and other parts of Europe. If you wanna join, you can either attend an already planned workshop or submit a date and a venue.

Video 1: PiBot Prototype Roaming

Video 2: PiBot Rotating, Blinking and Moving its Pan-Tilt Camera