Picture: Luis Garcia
HelloSpoon is an affordable meal assistance, feeding robot for helping people with upper limb difficulties or special needs to eat their meals.
Shaped as a baby elephant, HelloSpoon is specifically designed for children and elderly people to give a fun and happy mealtime experience.
The motivation behind HelloSpoon was to create an affordable and fun solution for the user to help them recover their independence while having a good time.
The main goal behind HelloSpoon is not only to be a robotic feeding device, but also to be a “mealtime assistant”. This means that HelloSpoon is not just a cute robot to look at, it has also optional features that makes it able to talk and understand you, play songs or do a little dance. HelloSpoon can even cheer you on after each bite.
One of the main features to be developed is the ability to control HelloSpoon over the internet. These added telepresence features would make it the ideal social and multifunctional assistance robot.
HelloSpoon will be available for only $499 US, which makes HelloSpoon the most affordable feeding machine in the market today.
All revolves around the Dynamixel XL-320 smart actuator from the Korean company ROBOTIS. This actuator is the same that is being used on the Darwin-mini robot.
But what really makes HelloSpoon an affordable solution is that you already have its brains using your smartphone. HelloSpoon uses the processor, speaker and microphone in your smartphone. This saves time and money better spent on addressing the needs of HelloSpoon users and makes the finished units less expensive than its competitors.
The core of HelloSpoons' software is a smartphone application, which you can download from the Google Play Store. Thanks to this, it is possible to build additional services around the platform and sell the hardware at a very competitive price.
Features of HelloSpoon
HelloSpoon App Screenshot
The developer behind HelloSpoon is Luis Garcia, a 23 years old Mechatronics Engineer from Mexico who has been involved in robotics and AI projects for three years now.
To be able to continue with the development and improvement of HelloSpoon a crowdfunding campaign will be released via Indiegogo by mid september 2014.
QOLbotics
