Robotics  

The Qbo robot has been around for a few years, and now it is about to have a little brother. The Qbo One may not be mobile, but it has many of the same features as the original Qbo robot. Look for this cute bot soon on Indigogo.

In 2011, the original Qbo robot turned a few heads in the robotics community, especially when it appeared to recognize itself in a mirror. Soon The Corpora, makers of the cute little robot, will release the next generation Qbo robot, appropriately named the Qbo One. Presented as a much lower cost and more widely available bot, Qbo One doesn't have any mobility features; instead, it’s meant to sit atop your desk and interact with you from there.

The robot has a very attractive curved shape with a round capacitive touch head, eyelids, and a mouth made of LEDs that allows it to express emotions.

Unlike Qbo, Qbo One is designed to be a desktop  interactive robot closely aligned as a product for everyday users.  It is easy to use and understand and could be ideal for educational implementation.

According to The Corpora, Qbo One is a very good platform for schools because the robot can reach out to kids as young as eight years old and teach them robotics and programming using the robot. Kids can learn about various sensors and make them work with simple programming language like Scratch.

Qbo One is based on Raspberry Pi 3 and Arduino. Both boards are attractive embedded platforms among hobbyists from several reasons including their low price, easy way to interface different sensors and actuators and a large community that share information and resources.

Qbo has seen many updates over the years. The distinctive round head remains on the new model.

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With the two cameras in its eyes, the Qbo One robot can see, recognize and track faces, capture photos, and enable immersive video calling. Three microphones and natural language processing let you talk to Qbo One from anywhere in the room.

The robot's mouth made of LEDs and a speaker connected to a sound card so he can do sophisticated sound manipulations and the head comes with two digital servos that control up and down movements along with right and left movements.

Q.bo One is fitted with a capacitive sensor on the top of his head that is divided into three sections which lets him react appropriately to touch.

An Indiegogo campaign will begin this month to secure funding for Qbo One. 

SOURCE  The Corpora

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Gadgets  

Designed by young Chase Freedman, the Brick Sound Kit is fun right out of the box and it works as a standalone toy, as well as a Lego® compatible toy that snaps easily to your bricks, letting you add recorded sounds through an iOS or Android app.

When eight-year old Chase Freedman was playing with his Lego® bricks one day about a year ago, he was having fun making sounds for his creations, and an idea struck him — "What if there was a way to record our sounds and play them back whenever we flew our spaceship." The question sparked a project, which has developed into a viable new startup enterprise.

"What if there was a way to record our sounds and play them back whenever we flew our spaceship."

After over a year in development, professional design and thorough planning, Chase, his dad and a team of developers are ready to go into production. The Brick Sound Kit (BSK) is a new attachable device that allows kids to record or download sounds to their toys, enhancing their playing experience.

Since it was designed extensively with Chase's input, the design is simple and intuitive to use. The BSK offers endless possibilities of creating motion-activated interaction for makers and developers and it opens up a world of sound, programming, and imagination.

The BSK is built around a custom Arduino board equipped with a gyroscope that connects with Bluetooth. It includes light-up buttons and LEDs, all protected with a highly durable and fun enclosure that works alone or can easily snap to anything you build with Lego®, MegaBloks®, Kre-o™ and other compatible brick building sets.

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The BSK is fun right out of the box and it works as a standalone toy, as well. It is a Lego® compatible toy that snaps easily to your bricks, and the iOS and Android app lets you record and playback sounds. It’s also a fully open platform where kids, collectors, makers, inventors, parents, and teachers can easily program and share new apps and games, taking active play to new heights.

For those who want to explore endless possibilities, the BSK can include a FTDI USB Adapter and Cable to reprogram the device functionality using free Arduino tools. Open source SDKs allow anyone to build their own apps and games controlled by the BSK. All programming will be easy to learn for any age and supported by the team through an inventor portal.

The project is currently running a Kickstarter campaign to help push it through to launch. Here's hoping this young inventor has a successful campaign, and continues to learn and explore!

SOURCE  Brick Sound Kit

By 33rd Square

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 Microscopy  

The world’s first low-cost Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) has been developed by multinational teams of students in Beijing using LEGO as the machine's building blocks.

F
irst introduced into commercial markets back in 1989, Atomic Force Microscopes (AFMs) were rather pricy, ranging from $10,000 all the way up to $1,000,0000, according to which features and capabilities a machine might include.

But now, students created a microscope capable of imaging a single atom out of LEGO Mindstorms, 3D printed parts and other off-the shelf components.

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During the LEGO2NANO project at Tsinghua University in Beijing, a group of Chinese and English students made a Lego-based AFM in five days – and at a cost of less than $500.

You might even call this an example of Moore's Law of Microscopy.

Professor Gabriel Aeppli, director of the London Centre for Nanotechnology at University College London, said: “Low-cost scientific instrumentation is not just useful in high schools, it can be a huge enabler for hospitals and clinics in developing countries. That’s why novel initiatives like LEGO2NANO are so important.”

LEGO2NANO, the third in a series of China-UK Summer Schools held at Tsinghua University, put teams to work designing a version of the atomic force microscope which will ultimately be used by Chinese high school students.

The students hit the mark with the winning team taking just five days to finish a microscope capable of producing a scanned image – in nanoscale detail – on a sample surface.

Mounted on a metal plate for stability, the inexpensive AFM features housings and compartments built from LEGO blocks and 3D printed parts. The student's ARM scanning stage was 3D printed and based on a design created by researchers at Bristol University.

Motion is controlled by piezoelectric actuators using Arduino processors. The stage moves one micron for each 10 volts applied. These tiny movements give the ARM a resolution of little more than a few nanometers.

The Institute of Making at UCL and the Open Wisdom Laboratory at Tsinghua University plan to continue to host student sessions aimed at developing the concept. Next target: building a fully-functioning AFM for $100.

SOURCE  Lego2Nano

By 33rd Square

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