Article Journal Post 5

This article is about a robot named “Pi.” They began to build Pi in 2006. At the time, they ran through many different body designs, sensors, and motors. Recently they have converged on a new design referred to as “Peppy.” The Pi robot has a base with wheels on it with a motor that runs on lithium ion and NiMH batteries. These batteries are more expensive then lead acid batteries, but they are also lighter. Pi has “eyes” that allows him to track objects around him. He will follow the object with his eyes as if he were watching it as shown by this video. He can also grasp objects and can “know” when he is able to grasp something when it passes a sensor in his hands. Pi even has 11 degrees of freedom as shown by this video at the bottom of the page. Finally the programmers have been switching to a new type of programing called “Python” to make the robot more compatible. They are also working on allowing Pi to move farther away from the computer. I believe that while this robot is very effective and highly developed, but that it still needs some adjustments. The decision to switch to the Python programming language seems like a good idea to me. Doing this allows Pi to be compatible with Windows, Linux, and MacOS X. The language is also more effective than C+ programming as shown in his example. However, the programmers stated that they still need to “integrate the omnidirectional vision system” showing that Pi is not completely done yet. They also still need to allow PI to move farther away from the computer, and improve his battery system as the battery life is currently very short. Overall Pi still needs some development, but he has already reached a high level of development and is still improving as time goes on.

http://www.pirobot.org/