Thecorpora has raised almost $150,000 (£113,500) to put its fully-customisable personal assistant robot into production.
Q.bo One can be controlled using Siri, Google Now and Microsoft Cortana and works on Raspberry Pi and Arduino, making it easy to code to do exactly as you wish.
The robot has two camera hidden behind its ‘eyes’ that can be used to record video, read faces, take photos and allow for video calling. Inside Q.bo One’s mouth, there’s a speaker connected to a sound card so anything he says sounds completely realistic and three microphones in his ears, coupled with natural language processing mean he can listen and understand what you’re saying.
Q.bo One’s head is powered by servos that allow him to move up and down, left and right with precision and his head sensor will react to different types of touches (such as tapping, stroking and poking).
With these built in sensors, you can programme Q.bo One to do whatever you like. And because he’s completely open source, you can use other peoples’ inspiration to make him your very own personal assistant, addressing your every need. The robot can also be integrated with a vast number of third party services, such as BM Watson with BlueMix and OpenCV if you’re thinking of developing more sophisticated machine learning and AI scenarios.
Some of the applications Thecorpora says Q.bo One can be used for include pill reminders, storytelling with animated actions to entertain children, playing chess and facial recognition to offer personalised services to those its been programmed to recognise.
Q.bo’s funding campaign ended in August and the company anticipates it will start shipping to backers in February next year. To confirm viability, the company’s product has been approved by Arrow Electronics, making it pretty likely this project will come into fruition.
