A Smart Tripod That Can Follow You

posted in: production

Ready for a smart tripod that can follow you? Hint. if you like programming, you’ll love this.

Arthur Wait created the The Smart Tripod from readily available components with his own programming skills. His creation recently won the Microsoft Robotics @ Home competition and a $10,000 prize.

Four essential elements of this project are:

1. Eddie Robot Platform (starting at $1249) http://www.parallax.com/eddie

2. Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio free at http://www.microsoft.com/robotics/

3. Kinect ($225) http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/kinectforwindows/ which is a motion sensing input device by Microsoft for the Xbox 360 video game console and Windows 7 PCs using skeletal-tracking, and other sensor technologies.

4. Your laptop

Beware that this is not a consumer project. It is for programmers. The Amazon user reviews of Kinect make this very clear.