AI Robot Academy

Object Tracking is for Robots

Mark Bosley — Sun, 11 Jun 2023 03:07:24 +0000

Computer vision is a field of artificial intelligence that focuses on enabling computers and robots to understand the visual world.

Object tracking in Computer Vision is the task of automatically identifying objects in an image.

There are good tutorials on how to use Microsoft or Google’s apis to do object tracking on a picture or video frame. Most if not all use a picture taken by a photographer a few years in the past. A dated picture is not very useful for object tracking.

The following picture is from a Tutorial teaching how to do object tracking with Microsoft Cognitive Services.

In this example a kitchen appliance has been located at 730,66. Those coordinates are relative to the photographer who took the picture possibly years ago . Is that kitchen appliance there now? Probably not. Do you care?

However, If we use object tracking on a picture taken a few milliseconds previously on a robot we can use that data more effectively. The following picture frame was taken from a robot.

In real-time it records and applies object tracking frame by frame. In this example it identified a cat (on a picture card) while it was driving.

Perhaps you are not interested in cats. Maybe you want to train your robot to detect your neighbor’s dog. Or maybe you want to find Bigfoot. Object tracking is a wonderful technology. But where and how it is applied is very important. I am just saying old pictures are not interesting. Make it real-time.

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Why Raspberry Pi 4 for a robot?

Mark Bosley — Thu, 08 Jun 2023 20:03:44 +0000

The Raspberry Pi 4 uses a Broadcom BCM2711, Quad core Cortex-A72 processor.

It includes a standard 40 pin GPIO header with which we can control a myriad of electronics components like range detectors ,motor controllers, and other electronic devices. The Raspberry Pi 4 has wi-fi support, connectors for cameras and speakers thus making it ideal for a plethora of projects. Due to its strong processor unit it is capable of handling AI abilities such as Computer Vision and Intents (Natural Language Understanding).

On the Raspberry Pi 4 website they list the price from $35. But due the supply chain issues it may be double or triple that even in 2023. But still amazingly cheap for a computer that is capable of running AI , motors, and other sensors at the same time.

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Learning AI with a robot

Mark Bosley — Wed, 07 Jun 2023 22:58:32 +0000

Most of us were introduced to Artificial Intelligence from the movies. We saw robots in movies like Chappie,Short Circuit, or Wall-e that could understand language, speak, and recognize what was around them. The good news is that these capabilities we saw in the movies are now finally realizable on robots. A Robot is an excellent platform for AI enthusiasts to learn from. For example there are many tutorials on how to demonstrate “Object Detection” from a picture. Like Microsoft’s article on object detection. They start off with a picture taken by a photographer. The picture was probably taken a few years previously. But detecting objects on a dated picture where the objects have probably moved or doesn’t exist in the current location is not particularly useful. But when one has a robot with a camera it changes the situation. Now when we handle object detection on a picture taken a few milliseconds previously then we are able to program the robot to react to what it sees. Perhaps we want our robot to speak to our pet when it comes into the room. Or maybe we want our robot to give out a shriek when the neighbor’s dog comes sniffing around on our lawn (you can imagine what might come next) . There are many other AI capabilities that we can add to our robot. We can place AI generated voices on our robot. Make our robot have a deep sounding voice. Or maybe we want it to sound like Dot Matrix in SpaceBalls. By the Way, There are many websites that can produce AI generated voices that are clones of a particular person. There are many wonderful and scary possibilities with this technology. Continuing on to what we can place on our robot. We can add Intents which would allow our robot to understand our verbal questions and commands( like Siri, Alexa, or other digital assistants). We can also add Sentiment Analysis to our robots so that the robot can determine if the emotional tone of our statements to the robot is positive, negative, or neutral. This would allow our robot to recognize if we are happy or sad. There are countless possibilties when we add AI to robots. What would you like to add?

Raspberry Pi 4 based Robot with mic, speaker, range detector, and camera

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Paradigm Shift

josefbalahan — Mon, 05 Jun 2023 23:59:41 +0000

Whether we like it or not, change is happening. One thing is absolute in life, is the Change. Humans have always learned to adapt, and this time around, we will find the best ways to survive and make it better for us. This seems easy than done. But, what are our choices? Can we sit and watch what is happening and do nothing? Everyone eventually gets it at the end, when change has occurred. It doesn’t take a lot of intelligence. What smarter people do is to become prepared. That simple! If we only get ourselves and our families prepared, we will be on the top echelon of survivors. Why not? What’s wrong to be amongst the strongest group? Isn’t that the adaptation humans have experienced for millions of years?

We believe we owe it to our kids to create an environment for them to grow and become strong and confident in life. This should not be left to the luck! Remember what Benjamin Franklin said? “Failing to Plan, is Planning to Fail!” Our program is a combination of cutting edge theories along with step-by-step applying in building an AI Robot that kids start widening the horizon of their perspective and possibilities in their careers. This is extremely important for them to start seeing things from a different perspective, not just the old ways. Please let me know what your thoughts are …

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New Era

josefbalahan — Mon, 05 Jun 2023 23:37:50 +0000

Things are changing fast and before we know it, our jobs and the way we interact will put us in the corner and we would not have any choice than succumb to the situation we are in. Should we be in an Active or Reactive mode in respect to our surroundings? we all have the combination of these two modes, but don’t we know that those who are Active in their responses to the occurrences and the trends would have the upper hand in life? Wouldn’t the Active people be better prepared for the unknowns when they have the habit of seeing the trends and taking actions accordingly? We all know that, don’t we? we all know that those who take the first step immediately learn what does not work for them? Wouldn’t that be a great lesson in life to adapt and find the working solution for their decisions by deductive approach? If only we practice the habit of finding what doesn’t work for us and try to find what could work for us, we would succeed. This is what I tried to teach my soccer teams at AYSO in Irvine for many years by not being timid in taking action. It’s parents’ responsibility to create an environment which allows their kids take actions and crush their fears by finding out what didn’t work!

This philosophy and approach in life would strengthen our brains and would become part of our character by practicing what we think we know and allow our kids to become courageous in making decisions in life. There’s no other way! Let’s help each other and make sure our kids don’t get behind in life and start learning about their dreams and careers at early age!

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