CrazyPi Is an Ecosystem Designed to Make Robotics Easy

It’s not surprising that we see a lot of robot kits go through Kickstarter, who doesn’t love robots? When you’re building your first robot, it’s usually advisable to start with a kit. There’s no sense in making an already complex project more difficult. CrazyPi is one such Kickstarter kit, which is fully funded already; but, what makes it stand out?

While most kits include what you need to build a basic robot, CrazyPi takes it a few steps further by creating a complete ecosystem for your robot to exist in. The product itself consists of a multiple parts: the CrazyPi main board, a variety of kit options, and a cloud-based service for monitoring and controlling the bot.

The CrazyPi main board runs ROS (Robot Operating System) on top of Ubuntu, and is designed to easily mate with the brand’s other boards and sensors. Those include a media board, a robotic shield board, and sensors like LIDAR, cameras, and a meteorology sensor. Communication is handled through Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GSM, or sound wave.

A range of rover-type robot kit levels are available, depending on what sensors and accessories you want. It appears that other types of robots will be available in the future. All of the kits are designed to be very easy to build, with magnets used to snap together parts. Putting together a CrazyPi kit doesn’t require any tools at all.

Once the bot is built, it can be connected to the CrazyPi cloud service for control and monitoring. This can be used for tasks like SLAM (simultaneous localization and mapping), or remote control from anywhere in the world via cell service. While the kits are a bit on the pricey side, they’re absolutely stuffed with features and the whole system appears to be well-thought out with a lot of potential. Kickstarter units are expected to start shipping in October.