A new robot from the TheCorpora Robotic Company has been launched on Indiegogo, where you can order them, in kit form and fully built, for delivery in December. Q.bo One is an open source standard robot that uses a combination of Raspberry Pi and Arduino and can be programmed in Scratch.

Aimed at makers, developers, educators and, above all, kids Q.bo (pronounced cu-bee-oh) comes from Barcelona-based company, Thecorpera, which we first met in 2011 with the original Q.bo Evo.

The Q.bo One is Thecorpera's second generation product and, like its predecessor, comes in kit form with clear instructions that make it easy to build. An Indiegogo campaign is currently underway enabling customers to buy kits at wholesale prices kits, both with ($369) and without ($299) the Raspberry Pi3, SD card and software required.

You can also order a Q.bo One fully built and tested for $499 plus shipping. Another option is to buy a Core Technology Package comprising the QBoard, Raspberry Pi3 and SD card ($99) which is for makers who want to build their own robots and automated devices. There is also the option to buy the hardware kit, a case for the Q.bo One and its servo motors, without any software, controllers and CPU for $249.

Q.bo One has two camera eyes with which it can see, recognize and track faces, capture photos and enable video calling. Its three microphones and natural language processing let you talk to Q.bo from all angles and when it replies, using its speaker, its mouth of LEDs provides some lip sync. Q.bo's head has two digital servos to control up/down and left/right movement. The top of the head also has three capacitive touch sensors that allow Q.bo to react appropriately to touch.

As the launch video suggests, Q.bo is intended to be fun and educational. The idea is the by welcoming Q.bo as a member of the family, it will help kids to be part of a future dominated by technology and artificial intelligence.  

Q.bo One is easy to program using Scratch,a block-based language which makes it easy to manipulate variables, use operators, understand flow of control, conditional statements and loops. This enables detecting and responding to real-world input, and to support simple multimedia programming, including drawing, animation and sound.

More Information

TheCorpera 

Say Hello to the new Qbo One

Q.bo One on Indegogo

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