Aria is a voice-activated robotic helper for my mom.
Aria is a robotic helper for the home that has many sensors and is precise enough to fetch things from around the home. She has a Raspberry Pi 3 and an Arduino Mega. You will notice that the cup actually contained one of my medications.
I intend to use her as a robotic helper for my mom who couldn't do small tasks after getting chemo for cancer treatment.
The Raspberry Pi controls all voice activation plus the Swift iPad app I created. The Mega controls all back end subsystems as well as an IR remote sensor as a backup in case the RPi has issues.
I wanted to prove you didnt need millions of dollars to create a robot that could really help people. You just needed logic and determination.
Aria has many functions programmed in C, Python and bash scripts. She has a camera so that I can see what she sees through the flask app. She has temp pressure and motion sensors to test for presence. Basically, it's a sentry feature. I'll be upgrading this with the Adafruit thermal imager sensor. Her arm can track by pixy which tracks objects by size and color.
She runs on 4 12 volt 9 amp batteries. They also are enough ballast so she can hold a good amount and maintain stability.
She has voice activation from the RPi with snowboy and the google voice api. She has an Emics 2 text to speech synthesizer for responses.
Her drivetrain is vex motors geared for high torque with vex treads. There is a 750 Watt converter to connect a 12 volt battery to the RPi. She has her own speakers that are about to be upgraded. They have low volume.
She took approximately three three years and 1200 dollars to build. Completely worth it. I just ordered lithium iron phosphate batteries so that price went up. Iām also adding a 7 inch touch screen to the RPi and thermal imaging from Adafruit.
Be sure to turn sound in for the video aria will bring me a cup with my medication in it when I ask her to.
Custom parts and enclosures
Schematics
Source: VentureAria
