Misty, the programmable person robot, is designed to be almost anything an engineer can dream up, from senior companion and wellbeing monitor to friendly pal who will tirelessly play catch with your dog.Now joining the fight against the pandemic, the engineers at Misty Robotics have defined a new role for her: A highly engaging temperature screening assistant. It is a new, turnkey offering designed for customers who want to screen temperatures at a point of entry to a facility, but who likely do not have the technical background of an engineer the robotics platform was originally created for. "Misty was'purpose-built' for developers who use the platform to create their own applications, using third party APIs, hardware modifications, etc. Typically, we provide developer support, sample code, and documentation," said Ian Bernstein, Founder and CTO of Misty Robotics. "But for this application, we started getting inquiries from all sorts of end user companies that do not have technical people. So, we knew we had to develop a solution that was turnkey and came with super easy and clear setup and operating instructions."

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.

Both are crowdfunding right now -- Magni has only 1 week days to go and Misty has just launched today. Both robots come from pedigree robotics companies and both robots are top of the line in terms of capabilities. And I have to confess, I'm a sucker for great robot crowdfunding campaigns so have purchased one of each for Silicon Valley Robotics and Circuit Launch. Magni is a robust mobile platform capable of carrying a payload of over 100 kilos, developed by Ubiquity Robotics. It comes with all the sensors you need for autonomous navigation, indoor or outdoor, has a sophisticated power train, and runs on a Raspberry Pi and ROS.

Sphero spin-off Misty Robotics has officially announced the mass-produced version of the robot helper it showed off at CES this year. The cute little machine officially called Misty II still resembles its Wall-E like its predecessor, but it can actually do things unlike Misty I. Thanks to developers' work on the original robot, it now comes with a set of capabilities and has a bunch of downloadable skills to choose from. It can move autonomously and respond to its environment, create a 3D map of its surroundings, recognize faces, respond to commands, charge itself and talk. You can also create your own skills if you want: its visual block-based programming interface makes it easy to conjure up simple skills use, but you can also use JavaScript APIs to come up with more sophisticated ones. If you're an experienced programmer/developer, you can add third-party services like Alexa and Google Assistant and modify it to create something entirely new -- maybe even find a way to make it fold your laundry or do your taxes.

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.