Little Robot Friends

The Little Robot Friends board is a nice robot featuring a large array of sensors and actuators. It runs on an ATmega328P and can be programmed using a dock.

The board comes either ready-to-use or as a DIY kit. I had the opportunity to build my own robot.

Out-of-the-Box Experience

The robot needs 2 AAA batteries. Once powered, it blinks and buzzes right out of the box!

It reacts to touch, sounds and light. It makes sound and blinks the two large RGB LEDs.

Different videos show how to interact with the robot.

An optional dock is required for programming.

Also, robots can talk one with another through infra-red. Each robot has an emitter and a receiver.

Making my Own Robot

I had a lot of fun building my own robot. Actually, the boards come populated with the SMD components. To complete the robot, one has to solder the 2 RGB LEDs, the buzzer, the touch sensor, the connectors and the resistors.

The resistors define the personality of the robot around 6 traits: Happiness, Chattiness, Humour, Enthusiasm, Neediness, Bravery. Each trait is defined by the value of the resistor to choose among the provided 2.2, 4.7, 9.1, 15 or 27 kΩ.

A video explains each step in details. Another video explains how to customise the personality of the Robot.However, I'd have appreciated a map for the location of the resistors and a list of the values to choose and define the personality more easily.

The only difficult part for the DIY-kit is dealing with the pitch. Pins are very close —about 2mm— and traces are very small. Even using a soldering iron with a precision tip and magnifying glasses, soldering some of the components require a good practice.

Software

Installation of the software on a Mac implies three steps:

Download and install the Arduino 1.0 IDE under the /Applications folder. Release 1.5 doesn't work.
Download the Little Robot Friends library and install it.

Installation was very was easy and worked on the first try.

The IDE is the standard Arduino IDE version 1.0. Version 1.5 is not supported.

All the peripherals are managed through the lrf object.

LRFPattern myPattern = {
LRFColor_Blue,
LRFColor_Red,
LRFPatternMode_Fade
};

void myHandler(void) {
lrf.blink(myPattern);
}

void setup() {
lrf.setup();
lrf.setEventHandler(LRFEvent_Tap, &myHandler);
}

void loop() {
lrf.loop();
}

lrf.setEventHandler defines the event, here a tap. When raised, it calls the function myHandler.

Once the sketch is ready, press Verify or Upload. The IDE compiles the sketch and then launches the uploader. The docks blinks the LEDs during the upload.

The library is very clean and includes full documentation right inside the code.

The Little Robot Friends board is supported by embedXcode.

The Quick Help feature of Xcode displays the list of available functions and required parameters, and provides help on demand.

Conclusion

The Little Robot Friends is a great tool to discover embedded computing. The large array of sensors and actuators make it very versatile.

The provided library allows a more advanced customisation of the robot. The documentation is well written and the examples give a solid start for programming more complex interactions.

The only difficult part for the DIY-kit is dealing with the pitch. Pins are very close —about 2mm— and traces are very small.

I really appreciate the fact the kit can address different ages: kids playing with then robot as well as teens programming customised interactions.

Pros

Nice robot
True plug-and-play
Great tutorials
Standard IDE

Cons

Rather difficult DIY kit

Wrap-Up

Great introduction to embedded computing
Many tutorials, examples and videos available