Kolkata: Engineers at the Kolkata-based Indian wing of French firm, EdifiXio SAS, have married robotics with social media to create a ‘social robot’, which can be controlled via Twitter. You can tweet with “Bot-So”, on your phone, command it to keep an eye open at your home when you are away, pan its camera or alert you when some motion — maybe an intruder — is detected.
Bot-So is the creation of Debraj Dutta, Tapas Bose, Avinaba Majumder and Siddhantha Krishnan — and they have just won the top prize of the Internet of Things contest organised by Oracle. The robot is controlled by a credit card-sized computer called Rasberry Pi — which in three years has become the world’s favourite platform for startups to create new applications — over 3 million units have been sold.
But don’t be fooled by its size — the Rasberry Pi, has 512 MB of on-board RAM, ports versions of free-n-open Linux and can run HD video.
Its latest avatar was launched last week — the Rasberry Pi B+ — with more USB ports and a microSD slot. The price remains same, $35 or '2,900 from online stores like RS Components or Element 14.
