Luxonis Unveils Rae, Its Pocket-Friendly Edge AI Educational Robot — Built on OAK Vision Technology
Built with educational projects in mind, the smart rae robot is now on Kickstarter for $299.
Luxonis, creator of the OAK family of depth-sensing smart camera systems, has announced its entry into the personal robotics market with raw, a pocket-sized personal robot designed "for users of any experience level."
"rae is representative of our foremost goal at Luxonis: to make robotics accessible and simple for anyone, not just the tenured engineer with years of programming experience," says Brandon Gilles, Luxonis' chief executive officer, of the launch.
"A longstanding truth about robotics is that the barrier to entry sometimes feels impossibly high, but it doesn’t have to be that way. By creating rae, we want to help demonstrate the kinds of positive impacts robotics can bring to all people's lives, whether it's as simple as helping you find your keys, talking with your friend who uses American Sign Language, or playing with your kids."
The rae robot uses OAK depth-sensing smart camera technology powered by OpenCV, giving it stereo depth perception, object tracking, motion estimation, motion zooming, corner detection, simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) supported by an integrated nine-axis inertial measurement unit (IMU), and on-device neural inference through an embedded accelerator.
The robot ships with ROS 2 and boasts full compatibility with the DepthAI application programming interface (API) used in the OAK camera family — and to keep kids' interests without them realizing they're learning comes with built-in games including follow-me and hide-and-seek plus barcode and QR Code canning capabilities, automatic license plate recognition, fall detection, time-lapse recording, object finding, security capabilities, and some advanced features including emotion recognition and sign language interpretation.
For extending rae's capabilities without necessarily having to dive straight into coding, Luxonis has included support for its RobotHub cloud platform for easy customization, application sharing and downloads, and collaboration within the community.
The crowdfunding campaign for rae launches on Kickstarter today, with physical rewards starting at $299.