HelloSpoon, an adorable and affordable mealtime assistant robot!

Let's Make Robots Robots
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Hello to everybody!

My name is Luis García and I'm the developer behind HelloSpoon robot.
What is HelloSpoon? Well, HelloSpoon is a mobile based robot inspired in a baby elephant to spend with children with upper limb difficulties, children with special needs and elderly three of the most important hours of the day for all of us (breakfast, meal, dinner).

Here I want to share with all of you one video of me testing HelloSpoon before doing the real testing with children and elderly, just to be 100% sure that HelloSpoon is safe enough to share some time with other people :-)

A little thecnical info about HelloSpoon:
HelloSpoon is using as main core one mobile app with PocketSphinx as voice recognition engine, as servo controller I'm using one OpenCM-9.04 type B and as the robotic trunk I'm using the "new" Dynamixel XL-320.

HelloSpoon is a project I've been working on for a bit more than a year, first it was using Dynamixel Ax-12 servos but when XL-320 where presented at the beginning of this year I started to use them because one of the main ideals behind HelloSpoon is offer an affordable, fun and easy to use robot.

Please feel free to leave a comment, if you like it, if you hate it, anything :-)
And if you like, why don't share it in any of your social media? So more people will know that a development like HelloSpoon is being made :-)

Thanks!

Update:

In the new video you can see some improvements on the UI after the feedback received this days! 

While some people loved cheering and music, older people might find this obnoxious, awkward and very repetitive. That's why I decided to modify the UI to invite the user to turn on/off some capabilities they might like/dislike.

Also other improvements on the behavior of the app and HelloSpoon in general.

Have a great day!

Update (August 5th):

Watch the new HelloSpoon video with children reacting for the first time ever to a robot feeding them!

Feel free to enjoy the video as much as the children :-)!

Update (August 13th):

Meet Mr. Amado Gonzalez, he suffered an accident and injured his right arm. As a right handed person he's having big problems trying to feed himself using a spoon, and also he feels ashamed asking other people to feed him. 

He wanted to try HelloSpoon robot and here's the video for you to see how it turned out!

Let's make... more people watching this video sharing it with your family and friends through your social media! That definitely will be awesome and help make HelloSpoon more known :-)!

Thank you!!

 

Update (August 18th):

HELLOSPOON ROBOT EVOLUTION (February 2013 - July 2014)

HelloSpoon is a robot I've been working on for more than one year, but I was ready to share it with a larger community just a few weeks ago. 

I thought it was important to show how it looked when I started to imagine HelloSpoon here in my bedroom since February 2013. Please take a look and see how HelloSpoon evolved from an expensive robot attached to a wooden box, to a more complex, affordable and deep solution :-).

Thanks!!

Update (September 10th):

HelloSpoon is about to start a crowdfunding campaign to improve the trunk design and motions with the help from the Dutch care center Eizt. I hope to count with your support to show to the world that HelloSpoon is a robot that can change and improve lives.

Websites are writing about it, take a look!:

http://botbench.com/blog/2014/09/07/making-meals-fun-hellospoon/

http://www.roboticstoday.com/news/coming-soon-hellospoon-an-affordable-meal-assistance-robot-3040/

I hope you can donate or share it with your network when the campaign goes live in September 16th, any of those options will be really helpful and I'll be extremely grateful with all of you who decide to support HelloSpoon :-)

Update (September 16th):

The Indiegogo campaign just went live a few hours ago and I would like to know if I can count with your support for share it!

http://igg.me/at/hellospoon

Thank you very much to everybody who decides give me a hand :-)!

Follow closely HelloSpoon development through Google plus and Twitter!

Google Plus: +LuisGIII, there I share very detailed stuff about the dev :-)

Twitter: @HelloSpoon Also everything is shared but not every detail.

HelloSpoon is intended to help children with upper limb difficulties, special needs and elderly to have a fun and happy breakfast, meal and dinner time.

This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://community.robotshop.com/robots/show/hellospoon-an-adorable-and-affordable-mealtime-assistant-robot
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Inspiring Idea

Truly Inspiring idea.  There is quite some similarity in our work…using phones, faces, voice engines, and wood as part of the bot.  I only wish my work can lead to something as helpful like yours.

Nicely done…Just a thought, but I think it would be more enticing to have the bot have a personality and entertain, read news, weather, trivia, whatever…obviously I’m projecting a lot of my own work (SuperDroidBot) onto yours…sorry.  Just imagine it though.

Perhaps a bin with other tools that the bot can grab at will by position…knife, spoon, fork, water, mirror, napkin?  Napkin would be good.

I could see mounting one to the back or the arm of an existing wheelchair.  The verbal capabilities would be most important for the bot to be useful all the time, not just the 3 hours.  The bot could totally be driven by voice.  User could make calls, get all sorts of info via wifi, and draw relatively low power from the chair to run all day.

Keep up the great work.

 

 

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Very cool project. Accidents

Very cool project. Accidents like this would make me a bit nervous about it though. :stuck_out_tongue:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CiE32h55HI

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oh my god…

I want this on my desk.  but if i could make it feed me potato chips and candy that would be even better.

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I like the idea and what

I like the idea  and what you are trying to do here. The design with the handles on the side is neat.  The applause after each mouthful is charming and pretty funny.  Since it is one piece, it would be fairly easy to clean. 

I would think to be autonomous and repeatable, computer vision comes into the picture.  Spoon feeding someone is actually a very complex set of motions.  I can think of many times spoon feeding my kids, I would have to hold the bowl while scraping to get the stuff on the bottom.  Different food stuffs are going to behave differently.  If it is very liquidy kind of food, you only want to get a bit of it so it doesn’t drip everywhere on the way to the kid’s mouth.  I would always scrape the back edge of the spoon on the edge of the bowl with liquidy food so it wouldn’t drip on the way to the kid’s mouth too.  If it is more viscous, you can get a bigger bit of food on the spoon.

I suppose you could have something that might spin the bowl a bit after each spoonful and on each use, you train it where to grab a spoonful and where to bring the arm to when it has a full spoonful.  That would reduce the complexity.  Maybe with a known weight for the bowl, you could know when it was empty or close enough to empty.  I am not sure that could be made to work; computer vision might be the only way.

Fun project.  You have done some great work.  I look forward to seeing what else you do on this.  Thank for sharing your project with us.

Regards,

Bill

 

 

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ahahaha ooh that gif/video

ahahaha ooh that gif/video is chasing me everywhere :stuck_out_tongue:

Don’t worry HelloSpoon can’t turn into a crazy blood-thirsty robot like the one from the video hahaha

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Thanks for your comment

Thanks for your comment Bill.

Yes it’s a complex problem but there are ways to reduce the complexity a lot.

And it actually depends a lot of: 1) the bowl design 2) the spoon design.

I will share some of that in the future.

Vision capabilities are not an option, the idea is keep HelloSpoon affordable and keep the design as cute and simple as it is right now. Yes, that’s a “problem” but I have some none-tested yet ideas that I’m sure will work.

I’ll keep sharing more updates here!

Actually I have a new video to update the entry :slight_smile:

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Everything is possible :slight_smile:

Everything is possible :slight_smile: You put the chips and candies and I put the HelloSpoon in your desk!

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Oh yes, I fully understand

Oh yes, I fully understand what you are saying. But that’s a little ambicious for what HelloSpoon is trying to solve and provide :stuck_out_tongue:

It would be really cool but I need to solve first the feeding scenario (which has its own complexity) and then probably expand the capabilities of HelloSpoon :slight_smile:

I already saw your project and looks very interesting I’m eager to see how it evolves, and the design is neat.

Thanks for your comment!

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I like the idea of redisning

I like the idea of redesigning the bowl and the spoon. I agree there are probably many clever ways to accomplish the goal with relative simplicity. Love this project too BTW.

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Design my own tool and bowl

Design my own tool and bowl might be the way to go. Spoons are designed for being used by humans! and are a tool that’s being among us from a lot of time so it’s max perfected for us and our customs not for a robot, and specially not for a robot who wants to be an elephant and that has limited mobility (not the same DOF of our arms because that will elevate the cost of the product).

The tool must be different and specially designed for the task. And the bowl must be the perfect companion of this new tool.

That’s the way to go from my point of view to keep it simple, affordable and still good looking :-).

But we’ll see how everything evolves…

I’m glad you’re loving HelloSpoon! we’re both very happy :slight_smile:

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That is a super cool robot.

That is a super cool robot. I can already imagine it helping so many people, mostly disabled, as you have mentioned. It’s so nice to see a robot built for a noble cause. I like the servo movement very much, along with the fun sound that it makes after every bite. Welcome to LMR Luis o/

 

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Thanks Enigmerald!This is a

Thanks Enigmerald!

This is a great community, I was always aware of the developments here and it was just the right time to join :slight_smile:

I’m glad you like the concept! And I hope everything evolves as it should and HelloSpoon becomes a more known and hopefully used platform when it’s ready! o/

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Great robot!

Great robot!

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Thanks noonv! I’m glad

Thanks noonv! 

I’m glad you’re founding it interesting :-)!

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I hadn’t noticed the shape

I hadn’t noticed the shape of the dish!  Interesting approach. 

I think all of us would love to build something that makes other people’s lives better through technology.  What a great project!  I hope it does well for you.

Regards,

Bill

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Very good!

Very good robot its make my fun at the same time but its helping for childrens its very usefull :) 

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Very good!

Very good robot its make my fun at the same time but its helping for childrens its very usefull :) 

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Other of the goals is make

Other of the goals is make it a joyful and fun experience not only for the user, but also for the people around :slight_smile:

I’m glad you liked it!

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Nice new videos. Those two

Nice new videos. Those two girls really like the robot.