Botiful - Telepresence Robot

 

This article is a work in progress...   Be patient. 

So a friend hands me a white plastic pod and says "here's a Botiful, it's based on the Yo Yo", looking expectantly at me thinking this gibberish would mean something to me . My response was "A bot if what?" looking puzzled at the palm sized cart. 

I vaguely remember seeing a little bit about this gadget but at the time my focus was on bigger things, and totally dismissed it.  

Surrendering your cell phone to drive it around could never go as far as anything more then a toy.

Soon to be forgotten and not something that would ever make it past a novelty product.  At best a good Holiday gift for a season. I couldn't have been more right. 

Well Botiful was put on a kickstarter and was funded to 93,000 just clearing their 90,000 goal. with estimated delivery in Mid-2012  

Actually shipped in 2014?  

It's based on the ioio board at $40, that google put out at one of their conferences and had a big hackathon in April 2011. 

Pronounced (YoYo like the toy) . 

PIC24FJ256

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOIO

https://www.sparkfun.com/products/retired/12633

https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/ioio-otg-hookup-guide/software-downloads-and-installation-

All open source hardware is connected to an Android phone over USB.
Then developers can control it though a Java Library you add to an Android app.   This encouraged Android application development and opened IOT , I/O and Robotics applications. 

Lots Phone to Phone driving apps, but the real killer app was Skype support.

...

Skype only briefly supported the PTZ Pan Tilt Zoon that naturally mapped in to forward,backward ,left right, and zoom could be up and down. 

So skype was able to support this out of the box. 

A new feature just for you in Skype 3.0 for Android

ClaireCreator

November 20, 2012

I am really pleased to announce that Skype released the auto answering feature today, with Skype 3.0 update for Android !

I met with Skype Android team two months ago, to discuss about what could be developed on the Skype Android app to make it more friendly for robots. And auto answer was definitively your most wanted feature, that's what I told them. And they did it ! I just received a confirmation that the feature is included with today's update ! You will now be able to call your robot from anywhere without needing someone to pick up the call.

You can update Skype today on your android and enjoy this new feature !

https://github.com/Botiful    Last updated 2017.  

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1452620607/botiful-telepresence-robot-for-android

https://hackaday.com/2012/08/01/telepresence-robot-with-skype-connectivity/

http://www.botiful.me  No longer exists. And archive.org didn't capture the exe and zip files offered with java binaries (almost as good as source code) but these are now lost in time.