Malinka is one of the most popular single board PCs in the world. On its basis, a lot of professional and amateur projects are created. One of these days another one was presented, this time - educational.
It was developed by the pi-top team, which has shown interesting systems before. The novelty turned out to be large-scale: it is a robot constructor based on the same “raspberry”. You can create almost anything - from all-terrain vehicles to multicopters. The project is somewhat similar to Lego Mindstorms, but it is more professional, if I may say so, and is positioned as a system for training new developers.
The construction set consists of two parts - Robotics Kit and Expansion Plate. It makes it possible to engage in the design of a wide variety of robots. The metal base with nylon inserts and assorted electronic components can be assembled in minutes. The developers claim that the constructor allows you to create not only drones, smart cars, robots, but also a basic smart city. Of course, in miniature. The deployment of smart infrastructure in an apartment or house based on pi-top is also not a problem [4].
The set includes motors, servos, 720P camera and ultrasonic sensor. This is not to mention other elements, including wiring, boards, etc. The kit includes not only conventional electric motors, but also high torque motors. Additional sensors - 9DoF IMU with gyroscope, magnetometer and accelerometer. The expansion board has USB, digital and analog ports, a CSI camera connector, and a 40-pin GPIO.
Open libraries provided by the project are used for programming robots. So developers can create complex professional systems. They allow you to add features such as:
- Control with gestures.
- Avoiding obstacles.
- Object recognition.
- Path recognition.
- Face recognition.
- Autonomous movement.
- Human interaction.
- Recognition of basic emotions.
The kit is ready and will soon go on sale on platforms such as Amazon, Chicago Electronics, Digi-Key, b8ta stores, Arrow and Newark. The kit costs $ 199. Items, Robotics Kit and Expansion are sold separately. In this case, their prices are $ 159 and $ 39, respectively.
