The fifth generation of Aisoy1 comes with several new features and improvements while still retaining its very affordable price. Compared to the third generation introduced last year the new robot is powered by the Raspberry Pi 2 controller board, cloud support is introduced for a more refined experience while the Botmobile wheels and motors pack adds mobility to the robot.
Just like previous versions Aisoy1 V5 can be programmed in visual environments such as Scratch, Blockly and most standard IDEs and languages. The AIROS SDK is available for developers backed by a well-established community.
Exterior design of the Aisoy1 V5 is fairly similar with version 4 which introduced a better integrated Raspjet backpack that houses control electronics and an OLED display for mouth expressions instead of the LED array used previously.
Botmobile add-on components are mounted directly to the robot’s base by means of plastic fixtures and do not require modifications of the standard model.
A new 3-megapixel camera provides vision while a microphone and quality speaker complete the multimedia array. There is also an external 3.5mm audio output jack. Otherwise sensor, actuator and LED arrays are similar to previous versions.
Raspberry Pi 2 quad-core CPU provides increased processing power while connectivity is enabled via a WiFi 802.11n USB dongle. The I2C and GPIO expansion interfaces are also supported.
Along with the emotional engine and dialogue system the Airos1 V5 OS integrates standard libraries such as OpenCV, ASR Pocketsphinx, TTS Festival, Chatscript or Sensorimotor that enable various functionalities of the robot.
At the time of writing Aisoy1 V5 is on pre-order for prices starting with 299 Euro or about US $328 for the standard version, or 399 Euro including the mobility add-on.
