When the engineers at Vincross launched the HEXA robot in 2017 they wanted their system to be accessible and programmable. The group is back now with the MIND Kit, a system focused more on makers and building the robot from modules while programming in an open source environment. The MIND KIT also includes MIND OS, the operating system they say is built exclusively for robotics. A crowdfunding campaign for MIND KIT is running on Kickstarter now.
The required modules to run any project are the Cerebrum, Servo Controller and Robot Battery. Cerebrum uses an ARM Cortex-A53 1.2 GigaHertz processor with 2 GigaBytes of RAM. Fifty four pins and six USB-C ports are available with a commitment to plugging and playing quickly. The Servo Controller can output to twenty different servos at the same time. The lithium ion Battery discharges up to 40 Amperes, designed to power multiple servo motors. Lidar and Microphone Array modules can be connected to the top of the Cerebellum unit, and three bases for are available to give mobility to the system if desired. Most of the programming that can be done in the Operating System is based in Go and Javascript.
Robot applications on the campaign page include the robot shaking salt, applying hot sauce, flying a kite, playing soccer, and mapping its environment. The MIND operating system takes inputs from humans, devices, the environment or the cloud. Outputs can be the MIND robot itself, appliances, computing devices, or objects connected to the internet of things. Vincross has backing from Lenovo, GGV Capital, and ZhenFund among others, and this project is large and well-funded. I like that this project isn’t framed as a cool robot you can make and build, but a tool that requires you to know a little bit about programming and allows you to do whatever you’d like with the system. This is a system that will be great to revisit in two years and see what users have built. The crowdfunding campaign ends on March 21, 2019.