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LAURENCE MORONEY: So Billy, great to have you on the show.
I mean, it's amazing some of the stuff that we've been doing.
We've had a couple of shows like with the AIY folks.
And now we've got the person who's leading the whole thing.
So, can you tell us all about it and what brought it about?
BILLY RUTLEDGE: Yeah, absolutely.
Thanks for having me.
It's been a while since we last chatted.
So it's good to be here and have the opportunity
to talk about some of the work that we're
doing with the maker community.
AIY actually started last summer when
we were thinking about how to better engage
the maker community with what Google has to offer.
And I think everyone has really heard Sundar at this point talk
about how Google is a AI first company.
And so we felt that getting some of the AI
that we have available, you know, from Google Research,
and from our first party product designs structured
in a way that could work with makers would be a great idea.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Right.
BILLY RUTLEDGE: And so we came up with AI combined with DIY,
do it yourself, and created the AIY Projects Initiative.
LAURENCE MORONEY: So can you tell us
a little about what the AIY does,
or at least the first releases that you've done?
BILLY RUTLEDGE: Yeah, yeah.
For sure.
So what we started with was actually a survey
to the maker community.
So, at the beginning of the year,
we thought, before we jump too far into this,
maybe we should spend a little time
and actually see what do makers want?
And how do we engage the maker community in the right way?
Rather than just designing something
and throwing it out there and seeing if it works.
LAURENCE MORONEY: OK.
BILLY RUTLEDGE: And so, at the end of 2016,
we released our first maker survey.
We asked some good questions to learn more about makers.
What are the different groups?
What are the different segments within the maker community?
As well as what is their perception
of artificial intelligence?
And you know, is it easy to use?
Is it hard to use?
And if you had your hands or your--
the ability to access AI, what would you do with it?
LAURENCE MORONEY: OK.
BILLY RUTLEDGE: And we got some really good information back.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Cool.
And then, this came out of that, right?
BILLY RUTLEDGE: It did.
Yeah.
Looking at the survey results, we saw probably
maybe two main groups.
One is professional and amateur makers, mostly
engineering folks that have a full time job,
but experiment with maker tools and maker class hardware
on the side.
Prototyping a new idea for a problem
they're trying to solve or possibly
an idea for a startup company that they would like to create
in the next few years.
As well as, you know, students that
are learning about computer science for the first time.
And we heard from them that AI is sort of perceived
as hard, difficult, requires expensive, specialized hardware
and specialized software.
And we thought right away, well, gosh, we
want to demystify that.
Because its actually not that hard to get started with.
And there's so much that you can do on this you know,
affordable, capable, maker class hardware that's available
today.
LAURENCE MORONEY: And at Google, we
have like, a lot of cloud services with the AI
behind them.
BILLY RUTLEDGE: A lot of cloud services.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Like the voice recognition and all that kind
of stuff, which naturally lends itself to something like this.
BILLY RUTLEDGE: It does.
And that's really why we started with voice,
is because in the last, I would say, year or two,
I think generally people have become
a lot more familiar with and interested in using voice user
interfaces.
Things like Google Home or Amazon Alexa,
or voice capabilities in your car.
It feels more natural to engage with computers using--
using what's built in, the English language in this case,
rather than having to learn approach a programming language
or work with a button interface.
And when we did survey the makers, you know,
we clearly heard that voice recognition and voice user
interface was one of the top things
that they were interested in.
And so, for that reason, we decided to start with voice.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Right.
And people were familiar with Google Cardboard for like, VR,
right?
BILLY RUTLEDGE: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
LAURENCE MORONEY: You went with the cardboard metaphor.
BILLY RUTLEDGE: We did.
So we stole a page out of the cardboard VR team's playbook.
LAURENCE MORONEY: It's a good page to take.
BILLY RUTLEDGE: Isn't it?
It worked out quite well.
And we thought, you know, being a part of the maker community
is not only making things affordable and interesting,
but also just enough scaffolding for them to learn
about the technology inside.
Because we feel that makers would
probably you know, have their own vision for a thing
that they're building, whether it's a toy Tyrannosaurus
rex, or a coffee robot machine.
LAURENCE MORONEY: I'd like one of those coffee robot machines.
BILLY RUTLEDGE: I know, right?
If we had more expensive or sophisticated forum,
we thought that might be a barrier to people
exploring the technology, which is really the purpose.
LAURENCE MORONEY: I work with a lot of kids.
And to me, always the barrier to entry
is either complexity or cost.
BILLY RUTLEDGE: Yeah.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Right?
So it's like, you know, if you can reduce complexity,
as this does--
BILLY RUTLEDGE: Yes.
LAURENCE MORONEY: --instead of like,
having a, like a metal box, and the components inside it.
And as you reduce cost as well, it's
like, then that suddenly makes it a whole lot easier.
And, I know you've had overwhelming demand, right?
BILLY RUTLEDGE: We have.
Like you said, affordability is a key factor
in doing something like this.
And again, make to our maker survey for just a moment.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Sure.
BILLY RUTLEDGE: One of the questions that we asked was,
what computing platform and what programming language
do you currently use?
And you know, by far, Raspberry Pi and Linux and Python
and JavaScript were very popular with the maker audience.
No surprise there.
And so, right away, we decided to work
with Raspberry Pi for our kit here,
and possibly what's coming next.
LAURENCE MORONEY: OK.
Ooh.
BILLY RUTLEDGE: We'll share more.
And that helped keep the price point down.
Because most makers already have a Raspberry Pi.
And so if we could bundle all the accessories needed in a fun
to assemble format, such that they could put it
together and only spend just a few dollars,
it makes it much more-- much easier
for them to get started with.
LAURENCE MORONEY: I mean, for me, personally, I've
been playing with Raspberry Pi for a couple of years.
But I just ended up like, tinkering, just
doing some various software stuff.
And whenever it was to do anything
in hardware or anything exterior, I got scared.
But this was much more approachable.
BILLY RUTLEDGE: Yeah.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Right?
And so, apparently, they were really popular.
BILLY RUTLEDGE: Very popular.
So, to test the waters, you know,
we had this information from our survey
and from talking to makers at events, maker fairs and such.
So we knew we wanted to do a low cost kit for makers
based on Raspberry Pi.
And focus on voice recognition capabilities
and how to build your own voice user interface.
We put a few ideas together.
And then we reached out the Raspberry Pi, the foundation,
and asked Eben Upton, the founder,
what's the best way to get this in front
of your most interested or passionate Raspberry Pi
hackers?
And he suggested, well, Magpie Magazine is our monthly journal
that showcases projects that you can do with your Raspberry Pi.
So I don't know.
Why don't we send a few of your voice kits
out to our subscribers and see what the appetite is?
LAURENCE MORONEY: Nice.
And that's what this is?
BILLY RUTLEDGE: It is, yeah.
So this is-- this is the--
this is the unit that we actually ended up with.
It started off with--
LAURENCE MORONEY: It's pretty cool.
BILLY RUTLEDGE: We would send out
some of the PCB's that are inside
of this to the subscribers.
But it quickly snowballed into, why don't we
just build a kit and brand it Magpie and Google
and put everything inside?
And that's really where we landed.
So we structured the kit like this,
and made it look like the Magpie Magazine.
And inside, you know, is the actual magazine itself,
which has, I don't know, 35 or 40 pages about
building this kit.
So it's actually the instruction set for assembly usage
and how to hack the kit.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Oh ice.
BILLY RUTLEDGE: And then, you know, inside
we also have the cardboard form that you fold together.
So this is really fun to fold and snap into place.
Yeah.
LAURENCE MORONEY: That's before, this is after.
BILLY RUTLEDGE: That's after.
And then, the PCB's that go along with it.
This is the hat--
voice hat, which has a microphone and amplifier audio
output.
And then the actual microphone is
separate with an extension cable that goes back
to the voice hat, as well as the speaker and the activation
button.
And just an interesting thing.
The microphone board, we actually
made it a separate board which attaches back to the main hat.
Because we felt makers, as they're
exploring creative forms with what they're doing,
may want to place the microphone in an interesting place.
Like, maybe in the head of that tyrannosaurus rex form,
or in the front of that coffee robot.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Nice.
BILLY RUTLEDGE: Rather than have the whole computing
platform, you know, stuck to that side of their--
LAURENCE MORONEY: So a lot of thought has gone into this?
BILLY RUTLEDGE: Yeah.
The more we got started with it, the more involved we became.
And we really wanted to put together
a kit that has good value for the price.
And it prompts people to explore their inner creativity
about what they would make with a voice user interface.
LAURENCE MORONEY: And I know you've worked
a lot with people in education.
BILLY RUTLEDGE: Well we have.
And I guess it should be no surprise.
But, we started out really trying
to get Google artificial intelligence in front of this,
you know, amateur and professional maker audiences
I described before.
But as the kits went out, you know,
more and more demand of, hey, I'd like to get one too.
And eventually, Raspberry Pi or the Magpie
put them up on their website for sale,
and they sold out right away.
But what we found was, so many teachers and school club
organizers saw the kit and felt it would be a great way
to introduce their students to computer science,
connected devices, artificial intelligence.
And so, yeah, a lot of demand from schools in order
to get that started with Raspberry Pi.
LAURENCE MORONEY: When you first told me about this,
I said, I need to put that to the test.
BILLY RUTLEDGE: Yeah.
LAURENCE MORONEY: You know, just see
what it be like before we shoot something like this.
So, to put it to the test, we gave it
to some high school students to see
what they would build with it.
BILLY RUTLEDGE: Right.
LAURENCE MORONEY: They built some amazing things.
Shall we take a look?
BILLY RUTLEDGE: Yeah, let's have a look.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
- Cool.
- We can also tell him to turn left.
Turn left.
- Nice.
- Stop.
- Pawn to D5.
- D5 makes D5 your move.
- Yup.
And just takes, and then you go on.
- Shop for a New York Mets jersey.
Now she's done.
- Candies.
- Giving you two candies.
- So we get plural as well.
Nice.
Red is my favorite, so I'm glad I got a couple of reds.
[END PLAYBACK]
What struck me about that was like, how some of them
were so inventive with external hardware.
BILLY RUTLEDGE: Yeah.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Right?
So I thought like, with only five days to work, with right?
They might hack some Python scripts together
and stuff like that.
And some of them did.
And it was really impressive.
BILLY RUTLEDGE: Sure.
Yeah.
LAURENCE MORONEY: But there was like that one--
that one team that they built that little hexapod.
BILLY RUTLEDGE: Yeah.
That little spider that's crawling around.
Amazing, isn't it?
Very cool.
LAURENCE MORONEY: So it's like, they took three server motors,
and then they had like a little Bluetooth circuit.
And then they used this to do voice recognition.
BILLY RUTLEDGE: For voice control
the motion of the robot.
Yeah.
LAURENCE MORONEY: And then because the Raspberry Pi
and the image, the AIY image, had
like, the Bluetooth drivers on it, they
were able to just send Bluetooth commands over.
And the effect of that was--
BILLY RUTLEDGE: Wow.
I'm glad to hear it was easy for them to get started.
LAURENCE MORONEY: I didn't believe
they would be able to do it so quickly.
BILLY RUTLEDGE: Yeah.
Five days, you said?
LAURENCE MORONEY: Yeah, five days.
BILLY RUTLEDGE: Amazing.
LAURENCE MORONEY: It was really cool.
And then part of the other feedback
that I thought was really neat was around Python.
Because some of these kids had never used Python before.
And so it was a pretty good choice for--
BILLY RUTLEDGE: To get them started
with Python programming.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Yeah.
And it's-- by open sourcing everything,
and it's on your website, right?
And your website is--
BILLY RUTLEDGE: Yeah, AIYprojects.withGoogle.com.
LAURENCE MORONEY: And we've put a link to it in the description
down here.
BILLY RUTLEDGE: OK.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Now, in order to work, like,
does all this need to be connected to the cloud?
BILLY RUTLEDGE: Well the default use case is cloud connected.
And we demonstrate how to use the Google Assistant
STK for that-- you know, how to interact with Google, Google
Home kind of functionality.
And then also, we show you how to connect to the Google Cloud
Speech API, which is a more sophisticated voice
recognition, natural language processing library,
80 different languages, hands on jargon, and that sort of thing.
But no.
We also include-- or will soon include--
the way to do it on device, using a TensorFlow model that
can run on the Raspberry Pi.
So you can do the cloud connected case,
as well as the offline case.
LAURENCE MORONEY: OK.
So even like, a small, inexpensive computer
like Raspberry Pi, we've got TensorFlow speech recognition?
BILLY RUTLEDGE: That's right.
Well, we'll have it soon.
We're just a few weeks away from making
that available as a release on the website.
LAURENCE MORONEY: That's exciting.
BILLY RUTLEDGE: So yes.
We intended to include it with the launch.
But we were a little bit slow gathering
the training data needed to craft that model
and make it available.
LAURENCE MORONEY: I saw there was like a link.
Went out a couple weeks ago, right?
BILLY RUTLEDGE: Yeah, yeah.
That's right.
So, there's a link on the website,
AIYprojects.with Google.com/voice.
LAURENCE MORONEY: OK.
BILLY RUTLEDGE: And if you can look on the left nav,
under the maker's guide, there is a link
to understand how to do it on device.
Which, right now, there's just a simple step
to submit your speech so we can capture
people saying the words that we want
to put into the vocabulary.
And I think, for now, we're looking at simple transport
type of controls, words like, stop, go, left, right, up,
down.
Things that you might tell a device to
do to command to take some action.
And once we have enough data coming through that channel,
we'll begin training the model.
And then release, not only the model,
so that you can run it inside of the kit offline, but also,
release the training data.
So, you know, the spirit of AIY is very open,
open source, freely available, low cost,
when you have to include the accessories.
And so we want to make sure that the data that we're gathering
through the website to train the models
is also freely available for everyone
to take, and maybe create their own models,
if that's what interests you.
LAURENCE MORONEY: So the more people
that do that, to train it, the better the models' going to be.
BILLY RUTLEDGE: The better it gets.
Yeah.
The higher accuracy, the better response.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Because I responded to that when it first
came out.
And I sent my voice in.
And I just hope lots of other people do it.
Or this is only going to be able to recognize Irish accents.
BILLY RUTLEDGE: I did as well.
That's funny.
I did as well.
And I've just been looking at them coming through.
And we're having quite a good response.
So thanks for everyone that's done that.
And let's keep them coming in.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Keep them coming.
And we'll put the link in the description below this video,
right down here.
BILLY RUTLEDGE: Perfect.
Great.
LAURENCE MORONEY: So, given that this
has been so popular, where do you think you're
going to go next with it?
BILLY RUTLEDGE: Well, I think the general direction
that we're going next is to bring more--
more ways for people to create interfaces
for computers that are natural.
So, if this is using your voice to communicate with a computer,
what are the other ways that human naturally
communicate between themselves?
Like you and I are interacting through voice or ears or eyes
and hand gestures.
So, looking at a way to bring those technologies
into low cost, affordable kits for people to explore.
Maybe mix and match and build more interesting things with--
this is kind of the direction that we hope
to go this year and next year.
LAURENCE MORONEY: And me personally,
I've been like, tinkering with the maker
space for a little while.
But having something that easily expands
the boundaries of what I can do in the maker space
is just mind blowing.
So I can't wait to see what you do next.
BILLY RUTLEDGE: Fantastic.
We'll make sure that you get the kits.
LAURENCE MORONEY: I'm taking this one.
So thank you so much, Billy.
This has been a real pleasure.
And it's so much fun to play with this thing.
And I'm hoping many, many, many, many, many more people
in the future will be getting hands on and building stuff
and building really interesting things with it.
BILLY RUTLEDGE: Me too.
Yeah.
More makers, more kits.
We want to see what people do with it.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Just keep making awesome stuff.
BILLY RUTLEDGE: For sure.
LAURENCE MORONEY: So, if you want
to learn how to build one of these for yourself,
if you want to order the kit, AIYprojects.withGoogle.com,
it's packed with resources.
There's instructions on how to build it yourself, of course.
Open source code so that you can extend the models
in this or there.
The voice models that Billy mentioned are also in there.
We've put the link in the description below.
Please go check it out.
I can't wait to see what you'll make.
Thank you. and thanks again, Billy.
BILLY RUTLEDGE: Thank you.
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