Happy Arduino Day!

The Misty II personal robot has an Arduino-compatible backpack, and we can’t wait to see how you’ll use it!

The backpack on Misty II is magnetically attached. Give a quick pull, and off it comes.

You may have seen Misty II hanging around our site lately, but did you take a good look at her back?

Misty II wears a magnetic backpack on her back. And inside the Misty Backpack for Arduino (sold separately) is, yes, an Arduino-compatible microcontroller.

Pull the backpack off Misty, turn the backpack over, and you’ll find two screws on its back. Taking the screws out removes the cover of the backpack, so you can see the board. You can now magnetically reattach the board to Misty and have access to the microcontroller.

The cover of the backpack is off, and rest of the Misty Backpack for Arduino is reattached to Misty II.

This prototyping-style microcontroller allows you to attach sensors, cameras, LEDs, servos/motors, and more to Misty II with minimum effort.

So. Much. Cool. Stuff.

You can load your Arduino sketch, issue the begin() command, and send and receive data from the head to control whatever you’ve got loaded.

Here’s an Arduino shield with an LCD screen that has been added to Misty.

You can take the Arduino project you’ve been working on and super-charge it with everything Misty II can do, including autonomous navigation and the ability to interact with the environment with microphones, speakers, cameras, and additional screens. Who said the Misty II was only for software developers?