Loona: $300 RoBud-like robot from clicbot makers.

[Scott Monaghan]

Looks like the makers of clicbot are launching a RoBud-like pet bot, and if it is works even close to the demo vids, it looks pretty amazing.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/keyitechnology/meet-loona-the-petbot-you-will-fall-in-love

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[D. D.]

Ok that's cool...now I put on my to-do list to design a corgi sized version inspired by this bot.... Thanks for sharing!

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[Gmail]

It looks amazing, but when is someone going to make a soft and cuddly dog/cat robot?  

Thomas

-

Want to learn more about ROBOTS?

https://www.youtube.com/user/thomasfromriverside

On Sep 16, 2022, at 4:07 PM, D. D. <engineeri...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[Danielle]

To see a large number of Loona videos (many of which aren’t on their Kickstarter), KEYi Tech has posted them on TikTok:

https://www.tiktok.com/@keyitech?_t=8VkFOfH4kCx&_r=1

This is one of the best ones:

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRa8aWbF/

Regards,

Danielle (aka Miraenda)

On Sep 16, 2022, at 6:23 PM, Gmail <thomas...@gmail.com> wrote:

It looks amazing, but when is someone going to make a soft and cuddly dog/cat robot?  

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[Chris Albertson]

I suspect a guy off camera with a remote controller.  There is no way this toy knew about red flags and bullfighting.

On Fri, Sep 16, 2022 at 5:47 PM Danielle <mira...@gmail.com> wrote:

This is one of the best ones:

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRa8aWbF/

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Chris Albertson
Redondo Beach, California

[Scott Monaghan]

I agree with that. I expect all video so far is staged. 

I am skeptical that this will perform anywhere near to its demo videos, but their previous clicbot was VERY impressive so I hold out hope that it comes close to the promise.

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[Danielle]

I have robots that can color detect, then run a code routine based on seeing that color. 

Aibo ERS-1000 can see a pink ball and know to kick it. There’s no off camera person controlling the robot.

There are far cheaper robots, including CoDrone EDU and Zumi (both by RoboLink) that detect set colors and run programming based on the color. 

Take care,

Danielle (aka Miraenda)

On Sep 16, 2022, at 11:47 PM, Chris Albertson <alberts...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[Danielle]

I’m uncertain why this reply didn’t post that I sent last night. I’m resending it. 

I have robots that can color detect, then run a code routine based on seeing that color. 

Aibo ERS-1000 can see a pink ball and know to kick it. There’s no off camera person controlling the robot.

There are far cheaper robots, including CoDrone EDU and Zumi (both by RoboLink) that detect set colors and run programming based on the color. 

Take care,

Danielle (aka Miraenda)

On Sep 17, 2022, at 10:13 AM, Scott Monaghan <scott.m...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[Scott Monaghan]

I think all of these marketing videos though, are extremely staged: similar to how cereal commercials use Elmer’s glue instead of milk.

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[Stephen Williams]

This is nicely done.  We ought to work on a similar open source version.

Stephen

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[Michael Wimble]

Sure it’s stage. But I couldn’t help signing up for the Kickstarter. Hope to make my own staged video.D

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[Dave Everett]

I would be interested in contributing to such a project.

Dave

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[Chris Albertson]

You could make one using a simple wheeled platform that holds a cell phone.  The phone has...

• screen for drawing a face
• camera
• microphone
• IMU
• GPS
• WiFi and Blue Tooth
• A very powerful computer, much better then a PI4.
• Android phones have USB to connect thto the drive motors.

This is the first step, decide on a platform.  It would have to be one everyone could build or buy.

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[Sergei Grichine]

I second Chris on his opinion about phones as the best platform. The difficulty is that there is no widely available robotics framework (ROS like) to start with - or at least I haven't seen one.

A search for "android phone robot" produces plenty of attempts, for example https://www.openbot.org/   - all with very little following and not much activity.

From my very limited experience with Android Studio, using it is not a big challenge for anybody familiar with Java or C#/.Net - it is a full IDE with plenty of documentation and sample code. The Android platform is evolving fast, and backwards compatibility (or future-proofing) is rather cumbersome.

Creating a suitable messaging layer and a set of reusable modules (navigation, sensors, actuators) is a lot of work, and nobody will do it alone. Porting existing platforms from C++, Python to Java isn't easy either.

It could be possible to have ROS nodes reside on the phone, while your laptop runs the robot - but that defies the purpose, I'd guess.

I hope I am wrong and there are some thriving open source projects that can become a foundation for such work - phones are great indeed.

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Best Regards,

-- Sergei

[Chris Albertson]

There is something called "ROS Android" but it is not quite what you want.   ROS Android allows you to use a cell phone as a viewer and controller for a ROS-powered root.   So you can use a phone to control a robot.

But really Android is just Linux.

The other platform could be a Pi4 with a touch screen and depth camera, microphone and speaker.  But the total cost might be more than a used cell phone.

The first step might be to draw a sketch of what it could look like.  These robot pets have to look cute and we need an artist, not an engineer.  Same with programming, we need an animator, not an engineer.

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[Dave Everett]

If it's just a phone on wheels, it's less interesting to me. For me, the attraction of Loona is its physical expressiveness more so than the display screen.

Dave

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[Chris Albertson]

Yes, the artistic design of the robot is "everything"   You would not want it to look like a phone.  And once you overwrite the Android OS with Ubuntu Linux, it stops being a phone and is just a "computer."

My idea is that the phone would be housed inside a cute body or head of some kind.   All you would see of it would be the glass screen behind some kind of cut-out opening.   Maybe it looks like a furry animal that has a glass screen where the eyes should be?    

The suggestion to use an older phone was only to save some money and time.  As an example, you can buy a used Samsung Galaxy A03s for $60.    Then you install Ubuntu Linux over the Android OS and what do you get?

• 8-core ARM CPU
• 4GB RAM
• 720x1024 touch screen
• SD card slot
• cameras
• microphone and speaker
• wifi and BT radios
• IMU
• built-in lithium battery

It's an actual Linux PC with 8 cores and 4GB RAM.   It has speed on Par with a Pi4 but the cost is much less.   I see no reason it could not run ROS.

 You are right that if it looks like a phone it looses the apeal.But you need a screen, and a computer and microphone and camera and battery and IMU.  

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[Scott Monaghan]

Chris & Dave, this is very similar to what I’m trying to accomplish with the RoBud project: github.com/scottmonaghan/robud 

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[Dave Everett]

Yeah I've been following your work Scott, great to see. For some reason I thought it was you who proposed a "loona" project. My mistake it was Stephen.

Although I use ROS in a current project, I was kind of hoping to avoid it altogether in a small project like this. 

I'll be interested to follow the progress.

Dave

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[Chris Albertson]

"Small Project"?   A robot pet is a horrifically complex project.   I doubt all the software would fit into  small computer.  It would be made with many interacting smaller parts that all pass data.

For example, you might ask it.  "Did you see my car keys?"    This is not a problem you sove with 500 lines of C++ and an Arduino.  The problem is too big for one person to do and you need an architecture that allow people to work on the parts in isolation.   You need standard interface to allow software parts to be joined and removed and replaced.   Likey you have different parts running on different computers.

Weather you use some existing framework or you implement your own framework.       A common beginner software mistake is to say "This is too complex, I will re-implement it myself"   Then you find you need to work full time for 20 years

Here is just one Lula problem that is already solved with ROS.   Lula is mover her head and sees a red ball and decides to chase the ball.   How to transform the camera pixel (x,y) to real-worl corordinates.   You have the image but it was taken 1/2 second ago.  Where was the head aimed at relative the body, where was the body  1/2 second ago.  Can you build a transform matrix?  Why would you when this is automated in ROS' TF2 system?  Same goes with kalman filter-base localization.  how long what that take to re-implement?   Without it how do you git from living room to kitchen?

How do you translate the audio file of sound to the test "please come here, I am in the kitchen" to a series of controlled mother movements?   This is far from a simple robot.    

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[Dave Everett]

On Mon, 26 Sept 2022 at 12:14, Chris Albertson <alberts...@gmail.com> wrote:

"Small Project"?   A robot pet is a horrifically complex project.   I doubt all the software would fit into  small computer.  It would be made with many interacting smaller parts that all pass data.

I guess it's not small for you.

Dave

[Stephen Williams]

I kept a recent high-end Samsung Galaxy phone after upgrade for just such a purpose.

You really don't want to throw away Android for raw Linux: Just proper power / battery management alone is super valuable.  And there are many other useful features, interfaces, etc.  The best options would be to shoe-horn ROS2 as an app, or to jailbreak and just overlay on the whole system.  The biggest headache is probably how Linux distro specific ROS/ROS2 tends to be.

There ought to be a pattern for ROS-lite: Avoid ROS, but reuse ROS/ROS2 modules in a lightweight framework that is more portable, takes less resources.

While the phone screen is great, there is no reason you can't power another display via USB or BT/Wifi/USB to microcontroller to mini-screen.  The phone has i2c, etc., but probably hard to get to.

Stephen

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[Scott Monaghan]

What about using the MQTT paho Android client for messaging to and from the phone, and then you could have a ROS1/2 proxy node running on your workstation that handles relaying back and forth? 

Of course in this case, you'd still need an Ubuntu workstation.

Scott Monaghan

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[Chris Albertson]

The problem is that in theory you could do lot of things like port ROS2 to Andriod but the you have what I call a "job for life".  Because after every Android update and after every ROS2 update you have to fixed problems and regression test.    Just doing this take a full time person or more.   

As for using a phone as a remote control and display without actually poerting ROS to it, that is done already

https://github.com/ROS-Mobile/ROS-Mobile-Android

If you don't like the above and want to also hallway Apple IOS devices to be used then make the GUI web based and use the phone's browser.   I did this for a while then got even lazier and simply run a VNC server of the robot.  Now the robot can be remotely controlled from any device that can run a VNC client.   I'm using my iPad.

But running ROS in the phone hardware is different.  That means you can replace a Raspberry Pi4 with an old phone. The point was to avid the cost of a Pi4.   Using the phone as a display does not do that.

OK, a cheap and easier way seems to be the new Raspberry Pi Zero 2W.   As a test I just tried to order one for $15.  I'm new on a waiting list and will be notified.   But at least they are still $15.   If the 2W is not powerful enough todo everything.  Keep a Linux PC on your WiFi network to do the heavy lifting and put the $15 computer inside the robot.

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[Stephen Williams]

Having a cheap Linux node is fine, and may be better for more real-time needs.  But a mobile phone is very powerful now and should easily be able to handle everything short of tight real-time.  Or to be part of a multi-node system.

Chris et al: Can you share a list of all of the modules needed for some common ROS/ROS2 robot configurations & implementations?  Which need to be on the robot (sense & control) vs separate (possibly visualization etc.)

The basic ROS2 node environment for a number of languages has already been ported to Android:
https://roscon.ros.org/2018/presentations/ROSCon2018_ROS2%20for%20Android,%20iOS%20and%20Universal%20Windows%20Platform.pdf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cN3Ch5FVA94

Feasibility of having everything on Android seems to be about cross-compiling, and porting where necessary, each of the required modules.

Here: https://fkromer.github.io/awesome-ros2/

There are some android implementations:
ros2_android is a thin wrapper around ros2_java which uses the ROS2 C library.
There is no reason you can't just have C/C++ code that talks directly to that library.
Could probably also use Python if you really need to, although that isn't going to be as performant or compact.

https://github.com/ros2-java/ros2_android/tree/master/rclandroid
https://github.com/ros2-java/ros2_java/tree/main/rcljava/src/main/cpp

Example adding Android sensors, at the Java level:
https://github.com/esteve/ros2_android_drivers/tree/master/rclandroid/src/main/java/org/ros2/android/sensors

So, looking around a bit:

This is darn cute & clever: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emfvzUJiMLw

Impressive, showing everything but the last 2 inches (microcontroller w/ sensors, motor control) done on the Android phone:
https://www.openbot.org/
https://www.openbot.info/
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/06/open-source-self-driving-smartphone-robot/
https://www.hackster.io/news/openbot-is-a-50-robot-chassis-for-android-phones-fafeee33ed26

It has tensorflow lite (tflite) based inference algorithms, each run as part of an Android app fragment.

https://github.com/isl-org/OpenBot

https://github.com/isl-org/OpenBot/tree/master/android/app

https://github.com/isl-org/OpenBot/blob/master/android/app/src/main/java/org/openbot/tflite/Network.java

"The DefaultActivity includes the most important features of the OpenBot app in a single screen. It displays the connection status to the vehicle and reports measurements from vehicle sensors. The robot can be controlled by standard BT game controllers or another smartphone running the OpenBot controller app. We have also implemented a data logger to collect datasets with the robot. Currently, we record readings from following sensors: camera, gyroscope, accelerometer, magnetometer, ambient light sensor, and barometer. Using the Android API, we are able to obtain the following sensor readings: RGB images, angular speed, linear acceleration, gravity, magnetic field strength, light intensity, atmospheric pressure, latitude, longitude, altitude, bearing, and speed. In addition to the phone sensors, we record body sensor readings (wheel odometry, obstacle distance and battery voltage), which are transmitted via the serial link. We also record and timestamp control signals received from a connected controller, if present. Lastly, we integrate several neural networks for person following and autonomous navigation."

Also:

https://www.hindawi.com/journals/jr/2021/6695198/

sdw

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[Stephen D. Williams]

This is interesting, although $1100 fully outfitted.

https://hiwonder.hk/products/hiwonder-jetauto-ros-robot-car-powered-by-jetson-nano-with-lidar-depth-camera-touch-screen-microphone-array-support-slam-mapping-and-navigation?variant=39960852594775

Stephen

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[James H Phelan]

RoboBuds,

I've got all the parts with a JetBot, NANO, lidar, depthcamera, touchscreen.  Just need the software.

Tried github.com/hiwonder & there's a lot of stuff, but no JetAuto.

Anybody find a link to the software?

RoboDoc

James H Phelan
"Nihil est sine ratione cur potius sit quam non sit"
Leibniz

"Here am I, the servent of the Lord;
let it be with me, according to your Word"
Luke 1:38

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[Chris Albertson]

I think they are selling it for maybe less then you could buy the parts and assemble it yourself.  If it comes with an actual Nvidia Nano that is a big deal.    The company is an established company with a big product line.    I've been wanting to use their bus servos for a long time.  I eventually will if I ever get back to my sevo-powered arm project.

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[Chris Albertson]

With this company, typically you ask customer service, and they send you a link to Google Drive.    

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[Chris Albertson]

Actually that has happened.  There is an Android app that runs Linux in user space.   There are three projects to allow this, Google will find them.  look up  "Debian Noroot",  "UserLAnd" and "Andronix"  All of these leave the phone usable as a phone.

But if you overwrite Android with Ubuntu, then you get the full-up linux system that is much more developer friendly.  But the phone is no longer a phone.  It becomes a phone-sized computer.

ROS2 seems to have an Android API.  Here are some ROS nodes for Android https://github.com/ROS-Mobile/ROS-Mobile-Android.

I seems there are a half dozen unique ways to use an old Android phone and you could spend many months experimenting with this

The trouble is there are only 24 hours in each day and I'm spending "robot time" trying to figure out the mathematics of "smoothly walking with light feet in a natural way."    My dumb robo-dog walks by foot-stamping and I bet it is because I don't understand something.

Some people like to work on infrastructure, like getting ROS to run on a phone.   I'd rather spend limited time on the application layer.   Either is OK.  In my early career, I did operating system internals, device drives, and such.  Now I seem to prefer the other side.   My point is that no one has time for both.  

The discussion started because someone (?) suggested an open source project for building these social robot assistants.  I thought what was needed was an easily available platform.  I've changed my mind on this.   I think now what is needed is a well-defined architecture and set of fracture points with interfaces so that people can build the parts they want and then use other people's parts. No one has the time to build everything themselves.   When this is done right, the hardware does not matter.    The same code should run on a Jetson, Pi4 or Xeon-based server.

These robot buddy, assistant, toys are all defied by their high-level behaviors, not low-level hardware and drivers.  Language and vision and planing and memory is what defines this category. To be usful rather than just entertaining these things are going to need a full "sh*t - ton" of computing power.  More than could physically fit on a small robot.  A phone is not going to work.

On Fri, Sep 30, 2022 at 12:28 PM A J <aj48...@gmail.com> wrote:

Definitely like all of the power and sensors of a modern cell phone.

Some of the refurbished models on Ebay are less than RPi4.

Like the RPi4 over writing the stock image for Linux removes many

convenient apps. Perhaps if Google could integrate  a Vm system

or add their own Ros2 api to android.

https://www.digikey.com/en/maker/projects/how-to-use-your-android-to-communicate-with-your-arduino/aed1f8e3fa044264a4310c6b3b2a4364

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[Chris Albertson]

About JetAuto.   It looks very good.  As I said the parts cost more than the assembled robot and their metal chassis adds a lot of value.

As for the software.  I emailed the manufacturer and got an auto-reply "These days are National Day in China so we're in time off."  The entire county is taking a week off from work and then they will have a backlog of emails to handle.      If this is like their other products, they have 20 or 30 PDF files stored in Google Drive with tutorials telling you how you can make all the features they advertise work if only you follow tier tutorials.     

I always followup on quadruped projects and their quadruped code and tutorials are online in Google Drive folders and they provide links to the folders.   They don't seem to use Github.   Same with drivers for their serial bus servos, they use Google Drive. If you do not have the link, you will NEVER find it.   But they give it to you if you ask.     

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