EZ-AI development is on hold right now, well kind of...
We are in the process of working with some services that will allow the capabilities of EZ-AI to be far better than what they currently are. These include Wolfram|Alpha and IBM BlueMix/Watson. Speech Recognition will be performed through Nuance Cloud services. Advanced vision features will be available through OpenCV. A quick search of these services will allow you to see the end goal of what we are doing. These will be in the Rafiki project which is the primary focus at this time for CochranRobotics. We will release a limited use version for free which will replace EZ-AI. All of the current features of the EZ-AI database will be available through the new version. All of the services provided by EZ-AI will be available through REST queries and exposed services. This will allow plugins to ARC to be able to use these services.
There has been a huge amount of changes to what is possible since I first started working on EZ-AI. This huge shift of improved technologies has made it necessary to rework EZ-AI so that it can continue to grow and mature.
We are also toying with the idea of allowing programmers to write their own business logic layer within Rafiki. This would allow a programmer to be able to use the core services of Rafiki/EZ-AI and write their own applications with the data that is returned. It will probably be a while before this is implemented, but it is something that we are trying to make happen.
I have probably said too much, but wanted to give you all a picture of what is happening and why EZ-AI isn't being worked on directly. We hope to have our new AI available around the end of the year. There are multiple developers working on this while I find come up with solutions to other problems that arise.
As far as Rafiki goes, the pods are functioning great and additional code/abilities are being added almost daily. The models for the pods are being tweaked to expose the HDMI and usb ports and network port to the outside of the case. This will allow someone to connect a mouse, keyboard and monitor to the pod and use it as a computer if they would like. The Rafiki Bot is about 1/3 of the way printed. I am making modifications to the models as needed and reprinting some of the parts as needed. There will be 6 subsystems on this robot. 3 of these subsystems have been written and are ready to use. The other 3 subsystems cant be worked on until more of the Rafiki Bot has been printed. The 3 that are not complete are all very similar for motor control. I hope to have these ready in a couple of weeks. I should be able to show a demo of the Rafiki Bot in about a month, and then all of the robot programming starts. I will work on the charger base shortly after the robot has been completed and the pods are all working with all of their functionality.
One more thing on EZ-AI... As a part of this rewrite, you will just need to have Java installed on your computer to install and use EZ-AI. The days of the huge install will be behind us so it should make it far better in the long run. The other thing that this allows is robot platform independence. I will be working on modules in ARC to allow the features of EZ-AI to be accessible far more easily. This will probably not be worked on until December at the earliest.
Okay, going back to my robot cave. Have a great day all.
Hey! It's only Robotics. Healthy and happy life is much more important. The world will be here and ready to accept your work whenever it's finished. Take care of yourself first, then finish the platform when you can. No David, No new platform. It's a simple script.
Sounds like you've already realized that. Just don't fall back into your passion too much.
@David, I echo what Richard, Ted and Dave have said, take care of your self. You and Your family come first. BTY, Marry Chistmas.
Rest, relax and then compute! I have found that my robot is alway willing to wait for me. I look forward to EZ AI. Thanks for all of your hard work!
Well heck! I've managed to miss about the last month of updates as AOL has decided to blacklist all ez robot emails and dumps them in the spam box!
First holy crap I'm excited about the ez AI development and eagerly await testing
( although I'm gone for work the next six months Maybe I should take ALAN with me ?!?) anyways I'm with everyone else on this. Take it from me a guy who works 100+ hour weeks on films, take it easy. My blood pressure is barely contained by the daily pills, sleep patterns are all crazy from working nutty hours over the past 25 years. Drink a lot of water (64 oz) a day to drop your blood pressure, rest when you can, try and get consistent sleep patterns!
Once you get these things off the ground you can over see the work and get the young ones to burn the midnight oil!
My hope is that I will have an EZ-AI plugin for ARC by next week.
There are some changes that we are putting in that designing this as a plugin allows us to do.
The initial "Hey Rafiki" command can now be done through the Speech Recognition control. It would also allow the user to change this command to anything they want like "YO Adrian" or "I pity the fool!".
The facial recognition can now be done through the camera control which can set a variable that we would use.
This helps us to focus on what EZ-AI does well and get rid of some of the trigger events that can now be handled through scripts.
We have to redesign some things on the client to be more of a service based architecture, and those changes should be complete this weekend. From there I will work on making it into a plugin.
The pods would still run the Java client.
Cant´t wait to test it. Great work!
Looking for some advice here...
As is the case with most things like this, it seems that others that I was depending on to complete certain parts of the Rafiki project are not able to come through as promised. This has slowed progress down a lot on Rafiki. I end up doing everything that was promised by others and I have limited time to complete everything. Something as simple as needing to design a circuit board ends up pulling me away from other areas, which slows things down.
I can either continue to complete a solution that is mass produced and sell it much later than I had hoped, or I can sell Rafiki as a kit of parts with the STL files. This would allow me to then focus on the code to make Rafiki work within ARC as I want it to while fulfilling orders. The good thing about this solution is that the manufacturing costs become far less on me. The kit would include printed circuit boards which greatly reduce wiring requirements and allow someone to simply plug in some USB type cables to make a huge majority of the connections. For the DIY type people, this would be a great option as you would be able to take the Rafiki products and incorporate them into other designs. For a majority of the public, this isn't what they are looking for.
I am really divided here but also know that there is a need to get some time to focus on the programming side to complete a lot of the features that Rafiki has been promised to have.
The thought is that the kit would come with everything needed (excluding the 3d printer and the filament to print him). The plugins would be downloadable, along with the code for each of the subsystems allowing someone to modify this to their own liking if they wanted to. This would still require me to stock some items that I really don't want to have to do, but it would be a way to get Rafiki out to DIYers much more quickly.
I appreciate your thoughts on this. I am struggling to make a decision.
I am a DYI kinda' guy and I have a couple 3d printers so I would love a kit version... Provided the kit version had adequate assembly and setup instruction support...
Is it possible for you make a kit version first then release a fully assembled consumer version down the road? Is this what you are kind of thinking of David?