Autonomous Android Vehicle

While the field of robotics is continuously expanding at a remarkable rate and better performing robots are created every year, robotics still remains out of reach for many students and researchers. The main reasons for this difficulty are the high complexity of the hardware and software of robots, and their typically high cost. We believe that the computing power, sensing capabilities, and intuitive programming interfaces of modern smartphones devices afford an inexpensive yet highly capable robotic platform. Smartphone based robots are becoming increasingly popular, with many exciting applications emerging in both academia and industry (e.g. PhoneSat and SPHERES).

As a case in point, we created a robot that can recognize, track, and follow a specified color object as well as have the ability to avoid obstacles in its way. The Nexus 5x device connects to the IOIO board via Bluetooth and uses the device's camera to control the vehicle.