this is mekkamon from reach robotics
he's a four-legged uh
little uh battle bot um each leg has
three degrees of freedom uh with the two
servos in the hip and one in the knee
and it means he's kind of nimble he can
run around he can make some motions he
can say hello to you
i'll just connect him so everything is
controlled through a phone app
he can run around
and the idea is if you've got two of
these little guys they can battle with
little ir transceivers in each side so
we've got one in each major direction
and what they'll do is they'll fire
signals at each other and we'll know
when we've hit or miss we're also
working on augmented reality gaming so
my particular particular area of
expertise is computer vision augmented
reality so that's kind of where i come
in and the idea will be that we can put
your mechamod in your living room have
it interact with the space it can battle
it can fight it can shoot
and it can do that either with another
mekomon or it can do it
playing one of our virtual ai mechaman
as well so he's got things like a i'd
say he likes a bit of a dance
um
let him finish dancing and then he can
hopefully right himself it's a bit
sloppy out here so he might struggle in
this in this kind of terrain he's more
of a living room uh liver
we've got
things to do with our battling so he'll
he'll um do kind of offensive lunges
sometimes he's got a bit of an itch he
has to scratch we have a range of things
you can play around with you can change
his body height so on some terrains you
might want him a bit higher obviously
higher is the more he's like to fall
over so you might also want to lower him
down to the stability you can change
where the legs are so if he's on a
narrow platform oh there we go
he's on a narrow platform he can balance
or if he's on a slope he can fall over
we can increase how far out his stance
is and obviously bring it in it's all
highly controllable through the multiple
servers we've got sitting within
obviously you and your friend can get
one they can battle but also you might
want to play by yourself using augmented
reality or you might want to teach him
to move yourself one of the things we're
quite keen on is that people can
uh enjoy
robotics as a whole it doesn't just have
to be about the mechamod it's we want to
inspire people and let them have fun so
we've got an app called mechamotion
where you can position the legs you can
teach and move you can say all right i
want this leg here i want this leg here
you can build up a series of movements
almost like stop animation and the
mechanic will learn how to move between
those hopefully coming up in the future
is a visual programming um
kind of language based roughly around
the idea of scratch so you'll be able to
have kids programming the robot and
having fun with the robot without
necessarily having to know how to get
stuck deep down in the code
eventually we're also hoping to have an
sdk that people can use to work with the
robot more in a more fine-grained way as
well i'm a computer vision engineer so i
first heard of reach robotics who make
the mechamon about four years ago when i
was doing a postdoc in the bristol
robotics lab which was just as they were
starting out there in the startup
incubator there and then it just so
happened i'd worked for it as a postdoc
for a couple years i moved into industry
and then i just saw a job application
for reach robotics and i thought
i recognized that name and i thought i
looked it up and it looked like a really
interesting job building augmented
reality around such a cool platform they
really want to inspire people everyone
there is really passionate about
making robots and making cool things um
it's just a brilliant brilliant place
can you show me the the app that you've
been kind of working on uh so i should
say this is a kind of development build
that i've been testing on but i can show
you part of it so
um
what i'll do is if i disconnect the
robot i can show you some of our ar
functionality outdoors it's a little bit
untested we're more of a living room
state at the moment but
what are you doing
so what i'm doing now is building an
idea of where the ground is using some
of the cutting edge augmented reality
techniques are available on mobile
phones so there's a ar kit and ar core
libraries from google and apple it's a
bit too bright to see
now it's asking me to explore the play
space so i can kind of look around and i
don't know if you can see
on the light but it's building up an
idea of what's around coming to the bar
just to be able to see it better because
of the great sunshine what i'm going to
show you is our augmented reality app
so
at the moment i'm building up an idea of
where the ground is just by showing it a
little bit of the ground space it can
map out what represents the ground and
what represents say a wall or a chair or
a table
so i tell it yes you have found the
ground and then it's asking me to
you know have a look around
find where whereabouts i can move the
robot and you can see it's kind of
building up a picture of
what's movable ground and what what it
can't work on
throws out some scenery elements and now
we can play the game this is something
of a development build at the moment
it's still a work in progress but the
idea is i'm the silver robot we've got
the gold robot there and i can fight the
gold robot using my attacks if i was
using a real robot then i would be able
to
take on the properties based on the kind
of things that are mounted on my robot
so we have these add-ons so we can
put shields on and off and different
numbers of shields will allow you to
have different abilities in game and you
can attach different weapons different
uh rifles and these will again allow you
to make different attacks within the
game
and
so if you have maybe more weapons you
can carry fewer shields because of the
weight that sort of idea
and it adds a bit more strategy to the
game and means it as you as you kind of
move on with the mechanic you can build
it in
the way that you're interested in
um so the other thing is it's entirely
uh modular so
we can take a leg off the robot we can
fit it back on and it's it's a uniform
connector so all the legs fit whichever
side of the robot you're on so the aim
with the ar is that if you own a robot
but maybe your friends don't you can
still play with your robot you don't
have to be left just kind of running it
around and you can get involved with
um for in this case you can have a
battle but we're also looking at kind of
more arcadey style games things like um
asteroids type games um
and it means that you've kind of got the
scope to enjoy your robot and as we
develop more games you'll be able to
play more games with it with it as well
and also the the mode you just saw was
the entirely virtual mode so you'll be
able to play augmented reality games in
the mekomon universe without necessarily
owning a mechamod
and then there's another connector here
which is a serial connector and that's
going to little imu measurement system
so i can
basically correct the body attitude
according to gravity and level the
machine but was straight across the
bottom and the screen was in landscape
and we had the menu the a b and the
joystick buttons