Robotics has become an essential part of many heavy sectors including manufacturing, automobile, and aerospace etc. Plus, we have seen in COVID-19 pandemic that robots are being used to take care of patients in hospitals or serve consumers at hotels/restaurants. These instances are indicating that existence of robots is not our future anymore; it is our present. To make robots a part of our everyday life, its developers require an accessible platform upon which they can design the robots. Misty Robotics is a company behind Misty, a robot platform purpose-built for developers. Misty Robotics was facing challenges to co-create an open-platform robot that will be able to perform human-like tasks with a personality as well as perception abilities.

In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks with Ian Bernstein, Founder and Head of Product at Misty Robotics, about a robotics platform designed for developers called Misty II. Ian Bernstein is Founder and Head of Product at Misty Robotics, a spin-off company from Sphero, Inc. focused on building personal robots for the home and office. In this role, Bernstein leads Misty Robotics' product development and design. Prior to Misty Robotics, Bernstein served as Founder and Chief Technology Officer at Sphero, Inc. that has shipped more than 3 million robots to date. Bernstein joined TechStars in 2010 with Sphero co-founder Adam Wilson and created Sphero, the original app-enabled robotic ball.

At 14 inches high and six pounds, the Misty II personal robot has an advanced 3D Occipital sensor for mapping, a 4K Sony camera for facial and object recognition, eight time-of-flight sensors for obstacle avoidance, and is equipped with two smartphone-level Qualcomm SnapDragon processors running Windows IoT Core and Android 7 operating systems. The robot is fully capable of running Tensorflow, Caffe, and WindowsML within hardware optimized runtimes. Owners can physically expand Misty II to add functionality and fun with several hardware accessories, created by Misty Robotics and the community of makers and inventors at large.

Misty Robotics announced their developer platform, Misty I, just a few months ago. Misty I was a hand-built prototype, with similar essential functionality in hardware and software to a more refined production robot that the company planned to release later in the year. Later in the year has now arrived, and today Misty Robotics is launching a crowdfunding campaign for a much more polished personal robot, Misty II, which can be yours to program starting at $1,500. In theory, I can definitely appreciate this idea of a platform being what's holding useful personal robotics back. It's very appealing to think about, and it would be wonderful if true, with legions of independent developers who can't wait to work with something capable and accessible enough for them to program to do what they want it to do without any special training.