When they tell you that with a Raspberry Pi you can only build home projects that serve to experiment a little with programming, robotics and something else, teach this robot. You will surely change your mind quickly.
An autonomous robot with a Raspberry Pi brain
All of us who have used a Raspberry Pi for any project, whatever it may be, have been aware of its limitations at the computational level. You don’t have to be an engineer to know that of course there are other boards and devices that offer greater capacities, but that does not mean that you can achieve things that really surprise everyone who sees them.
The only thing that is needed is to know how to take advantage of each of its capacities and, in addition, to have the time and resources necessary to be able to carry out all the rest of the project with the best guarantees. If so, proposals like this myAGV shouldn’t be so surprising.
This Elephant Robotics robot is the dream of more than one robotics-loving maker, because it could be said that it practically has it all. To begin with mobility, thanks to wheels based on rotating rollers, the robot can move forward and backward, even moving laterally without having to turn.
Then there is the subject of the front camera and LiDAR sensor that allow you to see and create a detailed map of the area through which you are moving. Thus, it can not only better detect obstacles, but also find them for what would be its other important characteristic: the use of a robotic arm.
The arm is one of the great attractions since it allows various actions and a very wide range of movement thanks to its six axes. In addition, it can be placed in two different areas of the robot itself depending on what you want to do.
The price of the robot with the most capable Raspberry Pi
Logically, the cost of this robot is not cheap despite having a Raspberry Pi as its brain. And it is logical, because it is not the board that really raises its price but the rest of the components.
Manufactured by Elephant Robotics, the price for the myAGV robot base alone is $ 699. To that should be added the 594.30 dollars that the myCOBOT Pi would cost, a robotic arm with 6 axes that gives a very great freedom of movement and to which you can buy other accessories such as the suction unit (110 dollars) so that can pick up certain objects.
If, in addition, we see that a clip for the base or the myCobot intelligent kit costs 42 and 339 dollars respectively, it is clear that getting this romp in full is not economical. But when it comes to teaching programming and offering something else, it is frankly striking. It is not a product for everyone, but one that a few will value.
The bionic cat
Elephant Robotics undoubtedly knows what it does, because they not only have that interesting robot, but also something even more striking: the bionic cat. A proposal that is reminiscent of Sony’s dog and that is not too surprising, but after watching the video it draws a lot of attention.
Here logically the speed of movements and response makes it lose a bit of interest, because one would expect more dynamism, like that of a real cat. Although we must also be aware that this is very complicated right now, as much as the Boston Dynamics robots have accustomed us to certain pirouettes. But don’t detract from this minimum either.