Jun.20, 2013
RAPIRO is a cute Raspberry Pi-powered humanoid robot kit that you can customize with a 3D printer. The name "RAPIRO" comes from RAspberry PI Robot.
Designed by Shota Ishiwatari, RAPIRO features 12 servo motors and full-color LED of eyes that you can build simply with a screwdriver, no soldering is needed.
"RAPIRO comes with a total of 12 servo motors, one for its neck, one in the waist, four for the two feet, and the final six for its two arms. Rapiro can walk with its feet, can grip a pen, and can turn its head and waist," said Shota Ishiwatari on Kickstarter.
Shota Ishiwatari is a talented inventor who designed the popular Nekomimi cat ears last year. He does all the technical development, CAD and physical modelling, circuit design and building, programming himself. The RAPIRO is designed not only to be cute, but also to be adaptable.
The servo control board is programmable and is completely compatible with the Arduino. RAPIRO is designed to mount the Raspberry Pi and Camera module in the head, but you have to buy them separately. Raspberry Pi costs around $50, it is a small sized computer that you can use to power your gadgets.
Additionally, you can add the Raspberry Pi Camera Module to take pictures. If you connect a wifi dongle or a bluetooth dongle to RAPIRO, you could control it with a smartphone. And if it heard your voice with USB microphone adapter, it could respond to your voice.
Now you can support this project on Kickstarter. The complete RAPIRO kit, including plastic parts, 12 servos, a servo control board, a RGB LED board, cables and screws, is available at £229 (€268 / $354), which is much cheaper than currently available equivalents. The estimated delivery time is around Dec.2013.
If the campaign is successful, Rapiro will publish 3D data (.stl) on their website, allowing you to customize the RAPIRO with a 3D printer.
Posted in 3D Printing Applications
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Walking is not his strong feature :-)