I've been working for a while on experamenting with stepping up to larger robots in the range of 2.5 feet, and have been trying very hard to answer this particular question: Which board would be best? I would like to give it the ability to detect voice commands and objects, be able to tell time, and be able to react to the time of day. While yes, moving around, using servos and avoiding the furniture is a given, I really want to try to make sure I can implement these features. I have found both the ez-robot and raspberry pi should be capable of this, but am unsure which one is the best fit. I've been looking into the consepts of using Aduino for sub systems (to take away processing time from the main board for things like complex arm movements, dancing, some sensory input, etc.)
What do you guys suggest, and what software or components would you advise?
I’m unfamiliar with ez-robot and the site is currently down, It is well spoken of. Robot Shop offers it.
The Pi2 should be a good bit faster then what I understand is the current ez-robot processor. Both can do voice recognition, the pI2 lacks a real time clock, that would have to be either added (cheap) or periodically resynced.
The problem I see is in recognizing what an object is in real time.This is a difficult task and the Pi2 is on the edge of being capable of doing this, but falling a bit short. It appears to me that neither platform will get you there.
My current thinking, and I am working with a quadruped of 14 servos, is to use an Arduino DUE for the mechanics. I believe that is similar but probably a bit slower than the r4 ez-robot. As such it consumes pretty much most of the processing power of the ARM3 (A wheeled robot would not make such intense demands), so I am offloading all intelligence to a Raspberry Pi 2. Others have chosen to use Android phones, which I think is a good idea as it already has many sensors.
Ez-robot appears to be easier for non programmers to program, it uses it’s own language. The Arduinos use their own version of C++ and the PI will run most any language that runs on linux, python for the glue is popular.
That is as far as I can go without getting in really unfamilliar territory, but I will say the Pi has a huge community with many resources available. Still it is not trivial to set it up, neither is it very difficult, it requires being able to follow install instructions for the various bits and being able to get around a bit in the OS. You can easily browse the web on a PI and read instructions on a browser on it while you work in a terminal window or in an IDE No doubt more complex than the ez-robot though.
Thank you so much for your Thank you so much for your response! I remember someone said something about ez-robot using C#, but I’m very interested on finding more about the Pi2. I wanted to give the user the ability to control the robot directly as well, as such would have a bucket load of applications. Supposedly EZ can do that- though, I hear/ read a lot of things I’m not sure it’s capable of. Still, I’ve looked at it’s software, and it looks pretty phenomenal. Thanks again, and by the way, what place do you head to for questions or research on Raspberry Pi?
A Raspberry Pi 2, is pretty much a full feature computer, it is not limited to robotics.
Arduinos are micro controllers, they excell at being able to connect to a wide variety of sensors and controllers. Usually these stack right on top and are referred to as “shields”. They are also not limited to robotics
I would toss in Arduinos into your mix of options, many (if not most) of us here use them as a base on which to build up from as they can talk to Pis and Androids. The Arduino IDE (Intergrated Development Environment) is easy to use. Just about any sensor or controller you can imagine has an Arduino sample “sketch” that goes along with it.
A Raspberry Pi 2, is pretty much a full feature computer, it is not limited to robotics.
Arduinos are micro controllers, they excell at being able to connect to a wide variety of sensors and controllers. Usually these stack right on top and are referred to as “shields”. They are also not limited to robotics
I would toss in Arduinos into your mix of options, many (if not most) of us here use them as a base on which to build up from as they can talk to Pis and Androids. The Arduino IDE (Intergrated Development Environment) is easy to use. Just about any sensor or controller you can imagine has an Arduino sample “sketch” that goes along with it.
