
Openbot: Turning Smartphones into Robots - homarp
https://www.openbot.org/
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dheera
Similar: I recently built a fleet of telepresence robots that use smartphones
to drive them: [https://github.com/dheera/robot-
tethys](https://github.com/dheera/robot-tethys)

The nice thing about smartphones for robots is that they have almost
everything you'd want for a robot: GPS, IMU, 2 cameras, battery, battery
charging circuitry, a high-res display, touch interface. And ALL of that for
$60 -- for say a used Pixel 1. You simply cannot get that amount of hardware
for $60 for a RPi-based robot.

I actually wrote all the logic in an HTML5 app running on the phone, which
communicates with the motors via bluetooth using the experimental HTML5
bluetooth API. I also wrote a "roslite.js" which allows for a ROS-node-like-
but-async abstraction from within a single monolithic JavaScript:
[https://github.com/dheera/roslite.js](https://github.com/dheera/roslite.js)
This wouldn't work for more advanced robots of course, but for simple
telepresence and educational robots it can work while being _much_ easier to
code than an Android app.

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eggy
I remember my oldest son built a mobile platform with a tablet on it, so he
could bother his sister at college remotely! He put his face on it, and the
tablet was on a stick that could rotate as well. that was over 5 years ago. He
was 15 around then. Anything particularly novel about this platform from other
phone/tablet robot projects?

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dhodges
The github repository is mostly empty of code. There is a project (empty) for
Arduino firmware, and it looks like they are using an Arduino Nano as the
device controller. And there's a project (empty) for Android code. I'd love to
see actual code.

My questions would be 1) How is the Android device communicating with the
Arduino device? My guess would be wi-fi or bluetooth. 2) What image
recognition software did they use in the Android code 3) What other sensors on
the Android did they actually use and how? 4) Is there any way to port this to
IOS? 5) Is it generalizable to other hardware builds?

The hardware looks very simple. As a software developer I would want to know a
lot more about how it works from the coding side.

~~~
re_riley
It's a thing we've been doing for almost eleven years. Check out the actual
Antbot product at [https://www.robots-everywhere.com](https://www.robots-
everywhere.com)

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mikro2nd
Why is every link on the site routing via google? Does this project -- cool as
it sounds at first bite -- originate from google? Funded by google?

Routing every link through google's tracking panopticon just looks... weird.
Raises questions.

~~~
dicytea
It seems the website was created using Google Sites[1]

[1] [https://sites.google.com/](https://sites.google.com/)

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Gys
I hope someone will create an online shop where I can purchase the custom
parts!

~~~
re_riley
Hit up Robots Everywhere, we've been making these for 10 years.

[https://www.robots-everywhere.com/products/antbot-rover](https://www.robots-
everywhere.com/products/antbot-rover)

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re_riley
This isn't new. The Robots Anywhere system, developed by Robots Everywhere,
started doing this in 2010 and demoed at Google I/O.

[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwfCldqmzcFZkjjnZi_IHAw](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwfCldqmzcFZkjjnZi_IHAw)

Check em out!

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spiritplumber
We've been making and selling these since the HTC G1.

[https://robots-everywhere.com/](https://robots-everywhere.com/)

Go on the wiki for full source code and schematics.

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IronWolve
Now if someone would just make a large lego type kit with all the robot parts,
so you can plug and play and make robots using smart phones for the control
unit.

Buy some wheel cubes, a couple basic cubes for a base, plug them together,
plug in the cell phone via usb, go.

Instant robots everywhere. Offer arm cubes, sensor cubes, lidar cubes, all
plug and play.

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monkeydust
After watching the video I wanted to build and play with this. Impressive
project and the democratization of robotics is a great mission to be on.

BTW if I wanted to buy the body (I dont have a 3d printer) is there a way to
do that (or could there be through some collective scheme?)

~~~
rokobobo
If you're asking about the 3d printed part alone, you could find some stuff on
Amazon [1] for a reasonable price and hoist the smartphone with any old phone
stand you might have lying around and a couple of rubber bands.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/wheel-layer-Chassis-Encoder-
Arduino/d...](https://www.amazon.com/wheel-layer-Chassis-Encoder-
Arduino/dp/B06VTP8XBQ)

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nl
Intel-ISL (who built this) have lots of really interesting and useful AI/ML
projects. It's worth looking at if you work in the field.

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whoatethedonut
This looks fantastic! How soon before your github has the code in there? The
STL files look great.

~~~
spiritplumber
I don't know about github but the schematics and code for ours has been up on
our wiki for years now.

[https://robots-everywhere.com/re_wiki/](https://robots-
everywhere.com/re_wiki/)

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finolex1
Robotics newbie here - does this work with the ROS software stack?

~~~
ragebol
There is not much source code to judge this by, the android dir of the source
repo [https://github.com/intel-isl/OpenBot](https://github.com/intel-
isl/OpenBot) is currently empty.

But you can run ROS nodes on an android phone and maybe talk to the Arduino
through a serial-to-USB port on the phone?

