Misty Robot

After a year of waitting for the new in devlopment all rounder robot was it worth the wait and the price?

Hello there it has been a while since i post something on this blog. I have been busy recently with my studies and work. So let's get straight to the point

The misty robot developed by Sphero, Inc. which is famous a lot of learning robot for educations and the R2-D2 robot toys that you might see at JB Hi-fi. This is the first time they have ever tackled on a robot of this scale of complexity and it turned out ....fine?

There is a lot to say about this robot starting off with it's history. First let's classify misty robot as a strictly crowdfunding project. Started back in Jan 2018 when Sphero, Inc. announced at CES that they are working on a platform development robot that is affordable and at the same time cutting edge in technology. It's main goal was to make more advanced technology like 3d space Mapping to touch sensor packed into one single robot and affordable for students with it's kickstarting/backer price at $2,399 USD. Of course this raises a lot of doubts and questions. It still got enough backers to start off the project through a somewhat rocky development and delays it eventually got to it's backer. I supposed at this point everyone who backed the project have their hand on the robot already. Crowdfuning project wise, thanks to the reputation of the company and the supports. It definitely guaranteed and comes off as less shady and more quality than just another kickstarter or indegogo project.

I have gone through a lot of difficulties of getting Misty robot to Australia but i guess in the end it's pay off. Beside a problem out of the box where misty servos was not connected which i have fixed easily.

THE HARDWARE:

EXTERNAL:

Out of the box we have misty a charging mats and two cables. One for the charging mat and one straight to misty battery.

Misty build quality is very good with white clean color and high quality Injection molded ABS for the outside case and NBR (a type of synthetic rubber) for the track the robot is as quality, sleek and clean as it looks.

The expandabilty and repairdability of misty is also good and intuitive . By using a #2 size phillips screwdriver you can open and access everysingle spot on misty. The part's are easy to take off and easy to attached back.

Physical expandability of Misty is ok. They have done what is promised added an optional backpack on misty where you can expand with an Arduino and also a small hinge on the rear where you can connect a crate or a trolley.

INTERNAL:

Once again with the price misty does come with high quality internals that justify a lot of it's price

PROCESSOR:

Qualcomm 820 Snapdragon processor and Qualcomm 410 Snapdragon processor. With the use of the two processor you can run the 3D mapping while running another interactive program for Misty.

POWER:

10400-mAh lithium-ion battery pack, 2 hours of operation (max), 30-60 minutes of operation (heavy use)

EXTRAS:

4K video sensor, twin infrared global shutter cameras (30 fps), infrared projector, three far-field microphone array, six capacitive touch panels, eight time-of-flight sensors, six bump sensors, and two internal inertial measurement units (IMUs).

Personally i don't have much comments or more information to write on the Internal Hardware it is what it is, it justify the price. Misty Internal Hardware cost maximum around 1200$ USD.

THE SOFTWARE:

The current SDK of misty is still in active development they lacks a few that have been promised in the kickstarter stage. But they do back it up with active support on https://community.mistyrobotics.com/. There are still need a lot of documentation but there are noticable progess.

One major point that i have to mention right now.

Security of the robot wise is very open. Misty is mean to be a study platform and a sandbox platform. So implementing and modifying your own misty out of the box is highly reccomended. Misty mainly uses wifi to connect to others devices with no extra security no ssh and the adb is easily accessed with a "su root".

Misty is a very "safe" sandbox to play with. You can test misty functions first by using the sdk provided by the developers.

http://sdk.mistyrobotics.com/command-center/index.html

Misty script can be coded by .NET SDK or Javascripts if i remember correctly devs are on their way to make python available too.

OS:

Windows 10 IoT Core, Android 7, custom motor controller and sensor RTOS, custom CV system, ability to utilize WinML and Tensorflow models.

That is all for now i will keep updating this post.