Robots: The Next Creative Platform for Makers, Artists, and Developers

Part four in a four-part series on who Misty robots are made for and why

Say you’re an artist. If theme parks worldwide can have animatronic characters, why can’t you? Yours can be even better, because it won’t be stuck in one place and can be autonomously responsive.

Or maybe you’re a maker who really wants to give your Arduino projects some life, or who would love to set your 3D prints loose in the world.

Perhaps you’re a creative developer. You’ve made your share of apps but you are ready to stop pushing pixels and get to something real. You want an easy way to make your software visions physically present, F2F with your users.

These are not far-fetched scenarios. From hardware hacks to custom skills, behaviors, and personality mods, Misty II is a robot who’s ready to go. Read on for photos, videos, and details.

Before we go further, I’m going to mention this right here — if you want to check out Misty in person, we’ll be at Maker Faire Bay Area this Friday–Sunday (May 18–20). Details at the bottom of this post…

Add on, extend, accessorize

Misty II’s physical body is probably the easiest place to begin to explore her creation options. Some of these require no special skills, others are as simple as 3D printing with specifications we provide. Still others are an option for those comfortable with Arduino or more complex maker projects.

Our creative lead, Misty Robotics and Sphero founder Ian Bernstein walks through the Misty II components.

Misty II has:

• A magnetically attached head panel. This makes it easy to give Misty an accessory like a mini (pico) projector.
• Movable, expressive arms that easily come off with one single screw, so you can add your own. You can 3D print cupholders or magic wands. Or add a laser pointer or grippers.

Misty II, with a custom gripper arm with a sub-micro servo (hidden in this photo).

• A hitch for trailers.
• A magnetic backpack that reveals serial and USB expansion ports. AND an available upgrade to an Arduino™ backpack. (Check out our post on her Arduino backpack for more details.)
• Easy disassembly and re-assembly, with a minimum of screws and screw types.

See just how incredibly easy we’ve made Misty to modify and extend.

Sense, express, communicate

Misty II is expressive and interactive. Her expressive capabilities are mostly accessed through simple JavaScript or Python APIs, though many can be exercised via her novice-friendly block programming interface. She comes with:

• Vision. Including a flashlight and color LEDs, a 4.3" color LCD display, and a 4K camera for high-definition video.
• Sound. Misty II has a great mic to pick up sound, plus awesome hifi speakers with a bass port. She is your mobile sound machine.
• Touch. Six capacitive touch panels. With these, you could write a skill, for example, that makes Misty go limp or shout when picked up. (Want to take Misty II’s senses beyond sight/sound/touch? You could add smell/taste abilities to Misty II by attaching an odor sensor to her Arduino backpack.)

Developer Cameron Henneke used only the minimal abilities of Misty I prototypes to set a scene.

• Expression. Misty II has a 3-degree-of-freedom neck, so she can nod, tilt, and turn her head to follow what’s going on. As well as the movable arms.
• Personality. Misty II’s personality can go far deeper than just her superficial expressions. Misty II has a personality engine based on a patent-pending “infinite personality space” where she can express flexible emotional responses as a function of both the environment she’s in and what she’s doing at the moment.
• Intelligence. This is not the place to dive deep into this topic, but Misty II does run a deep learning framework locally — no internet connection required. It enables neural network models for things like Misty II’s face and object detection, which add to her interaction abilities.
• And none of this even touches on how easy Misty is to dress up!

This is a Misty I prototype, NOT a Misty II, even so, it was hard to resist dressing her up! (Not that she liked it.)

So, we get it. If you’re a creative person, it’s been hard to see the point of robots. They’ve rarely felt friendly, and they certainly haven’t been easy to work with. But things are different now, and we’re extremely excited to put the power of an advanced personal robot in the hands of creative people worldwide.

What will you do with Misty II?

Some of the first creative mods we made for Misty II: Arduino headgear and a 3D-printed cupholder.