When it comes to robots, we may think of Walli, who is already rough and rusty but attractive, or the big white man who seems to be cute but has full skills, or the mechanical tough guy in Terminator and the hard to tell the true from the false in Western World These images have built a science fiction world full of a sense of future and cool for us. But the reality often follows the old saying: ideal is full, reality is bone.

Looking at the robot products on the market at present, either they are expensive and can only be demonstrated in the laboratory, which is inaccessible to ordinary people, or they are just toys covered with the concept of "robot", which can not be expected to achieve any special skills. For technology enthusiasts and developers, the extremely high threshold in the robot field makes them unattainable.

The robot we are going to introduce today, the HEXA all terrain programmable robot, has successfully solved the above problem: at a consumer price, it provides an excellent robot development platform for users who want to enter the robot field to realize the robot dream. Even the overseas edition of the People's Daily praised on Twitter that "the robot invented by a Chinese company shocked the world". What are the specific advantages of HEXA?

Appearance design

First, look at the shape of HEXA. It is completely different from the wheeled and tracked robots commonly seen on the market. HEXA adopts a six legged body like structure, which looks like a small crab at first (don't think about steaming first).

Each foot has three steering engines, which can flexibly move in vertical and horizontal directions. This structure ensures the super mobility of HEXA, and it can calmly cope with steps or rough roads.

The six bionic feet are connected to the head fuselage of HEXA. The head fuselage can achieve 360 ° infinite rotation, and there is no need to worry that it will "twist the neck" or "fall on the pillow".

At the top of the fuselage head is an LED display lamp, which is used to display different network connection states of HEXA.

The self weight of the HEXA is 1.75kg. When standing, the diameter is 40cm and the height is 15cm. When not running, it can be easily loaded into the backpack. For beginner robot enthusiasts, the lightweight and compact body also virtually lowers the threshold for people to experience robots.

hardware configuration

Looking at the front of HEXA, we can see the "face" of HEXA. The composition of the face is the key to HEXA's ability to perceive the surrounding world flexibly.

Vincross has equipped HEXA with many vision and space sensors, including a camera with night vision function, a laser ranging sensor, an infrared transmitter, and an accelerometer built into the fuselage.

If you feel that the built-in sensor cannot meet your needs, and open the white shell of HEXA, we can also see many secondary development interfaces such as USB, audio input and output, GPIO, I ² C, etc., which can let you freely play the imagination of the robot, and connect where there is not enough.

The bottom is not only equipped with the power switch and wired charging interface of HEXA, but also equipped with a wireless charging module. It can be fully charged after 2.5 hours of wired charging and 4.5 hours of wireless charging. In terms of endurance, the standard endurance of HEXA can reach 45-80 minutes, which can fully meet the requirements of conventional outdoor use.

Operation experience

The appearance is similar to that of the hardware. Next, the actual operation. Nowadays, as a universal control terminal, Vincross has also developed a unified robot operation application - HEXA App. After connecting with the device according to the prompts, the formal operation interface is entered.

For the control of HEXA, Vincross chooses to implement it through various applied software packages, similar to various APPs in mobile phones. Therefore, the homepage interface of HEXA App is also similar to a small mobile phone interface. Vincross calls robot applications Skill. In the initialization interface, in addition to setting and management, two Skills are pre installed on the official website, namely Explore and Dance.

Explore is the most common procedure for operating HEXA. In this program, you can control the HEXA in all directions, and the interface displays the real-time feedback image of the HEXA camera.

The virtual rocker and function keys on the interface can control the walking direction, walking gait, head movement, camera mode, motion mode, etc. of HEXA.

Functions such as drilling holes, climbing steps and greeting can be realized in this program.

(Normal gait)

(Caving gait)

(Climbing stairs)

The Dance program is more entertaining. It is a program that lets HEXA dance. Officially, it has 17 leg movements and 5 head movements, and random combination can make HEXA dance various interesting dances.

In addition, similar to the iPhone App Store, Vincross has also added a Skill Store in the HEXA App, where users can download more Skills to achieve various functions. For example, this Skill, called Bullfight, was developed by an overseas user. It uses the image recognition technology of the HEXA camera to make it rush like a bull when it finds red in the field of vision.

Development function

As a development platform for technology enthusiasts and developers to explore and learn robots, the biggest feature of HEXA is its development capability, including all terrain walking, built-in sensors, rich secondary development interfaces and various skills used to operate HEXA, all of which are designed to better create HEXA as an excellent robot development platform.

HEXA is equipped with the MIND OS system developed by Vincross. It is optimized based on the Linux kernel, ensuring the stability and efficiency of robot computing. At the same time, Vincross also provides a complete MIND SDK and development documents. It uses the Go language for programming, and is easy to integrate a variety of third-party libraries such as ROS, OpenCV, etc.

If you want your HEXA to have unique skills, you can easily write a robot application (Skill) with a few lines of code, and let your HEXA do fireworks with different colors.

It doesn't matter if you can't program. The development tools of HEXA also include 3D visual simulators. You can design various new actions for HEXA without writing code by moving the mouse.

Behind HEXA and MIND, Vincross actually constructs a complete robot ecology. The Skill Store we just mentioned is not just used to download Skills. You can also upload and share your created Skills on it, so that more technology lovers and developers can use the robot applications you have developed.

Summary

Both industry development and policy orientation undoubtedly make robots the hottest industry in 2017. As the next generation computing platform, if the robot industry wants to really develop, it is far beyond the power of one person or one company. It must gather technology enthusiasts and developers to really promote the transformation of the robot industry. The emergence of HEXA provides an opportunity for people who want to enter the robot field.

Similar to iOS and Android in mobile phones. Vincross, based on the complete hardware, software, network services and community robot ecology built by HEXA, has lowered the threshold for robot exploration, so that people can easily enter the robot field for robot learning and development without understanding the underlying hardware and complex mechanical structure of robots.

In terms of price, the market price of HEXA 6999 yuan has truly achieved "consumer level", giving this robot product with extremely strong performance an unparalleled price advantage. It is worth mentioning that at present, HEXA is in JD's crowdfunding. The crowdfunding price starts from 3499 yuan and the project will last until October 19. Now is the best time to start this robot at half price.