Brian David Johnson Introduces The Open-Source Robot, Jimmy

 Robots  

Brian David Johnson, a futurist at Intel, has shown off 'Jimmy' at this year's Maker Faire. Jimmy is said to be a robot for the 21st Century. His artificial intelligence will be open source as is the design and the technical description for 3D printing his parts.

Intel's resident futurist Brian David Johnson has shown off 'Jimmy' at this year's Maker Faire. Jimmy is said to be a robot for the 21st Century.   Jimmy's artificial intelligence will be open source as is the design and the technical description for 3D printing his parts.

Johnson, has been toying with the idea of the future’s robots for more than a decade at Intel. According to the futurist,these robots are going to be infinitely programmable, and very personal for each creator.

“We can come to see these robots as an extension of ourselves, and that these are platforms to create as many of them as we can,” Johnson said at the recent Intel Developer Forum. “Our motto is that every robot has a name.”

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Johnson described Jimmy in a new free e-book, which has a manifesto for what a 21st Century Robot should be. Jimmy is as programmable as a smartphone. Johnson wrote the book with all of the open source files for printing the robot as a 3D object.

The book represents what Johnson described in his book, Science Fiction Prototyping: Designing the Future with Science Fiction, and has been carried over into Intel's Tomorrow Project.

“It’s there and ready to use,” David Johnson said. “We are creating new ways of interacting with robots.”

Johnson said the robot will be available to buy for less than $1,000 in the coming months, and he is trying to get the whole cost under $500.  The goal is ambitious, to make robots more personal.

“There is no line between robots and our humanity," Johnson said. “Everything we make has a little bit of us in it. As we begin to see these robots as extensions of ourselves and allow them to go off and interact with other people and other robots. We can begin to think of these robots as extensions of ourselves.”

Johnson wants to hold robot Maker Faires around the country, sharing the design with people via robot kits. Jimmy will have a companion robot, Paul, that Jimmy can talk with.




SOURCE  Venture Beat

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