Have some fun coding your very own AI robot with TJBot, a do-it-yourself template to learn, experiment with and explore AI with IBM Watson. The project consists of open source step-by-step recipes, or coding instructions, designed for a Raspberry Pi to help you connect your TJBot to Watson developer services. Born at IBM Research as an experiment to develop best practices in the design and implementation of AI and cognitive objects, TJBot is an example of "embodied cognition" -- the idea of embedding artificial intelligence into objects in our everyday lives. Want to have a conversation with TJBot or teach TJBot to dance or tell a joke? You can use featured TJBot recipes to teach your own TJBot these skills or create your own new recipes and share them with the world.

It's easy to think of TJBot as a person. After all, TJ responds to voice commands, displays emotions, and can carry on a chat. But TJBot is actually a programmable cardboard robot powered by IBM Watson. This little robot gives you an entry point into the world of artificial intelligence and "embodied cognition." Now you can embed AI and cognitive capabilities into everyday objects and enhance your device interactions.

IBM is a community of makers, creators and thinkers. By nature we're a curious group of people – always asking questions about what's next, and within my team, what else is possible with artificial intelligence. We love teaming up with others who are passionate about the possibilities of technology, whether it be inspiring a new hit song, creating the scariest movie trailer, or helping businesses make better decisions. The idea of joining forces with other makers, creators and thinkers to explore the potential of Watson, in a fun and easy way, was the catalyst behind a new project our team is launching: TJBot. In the spirit of the maker community, TJBot is a DIY kit that allows you to build your own programmable cardboard robot powered by Watson.

For this tutorial, we're going to power TJBot with APIs from Watson Developer Cloud. We'll start by putting a voice interface onto TJBot, then give it the ability to converse and understand your emotional tones. In part 2 of the tutorial, we'll transfer the code onto a Raspberry Pi and put the whole thing into the physical TJBot itself. For the sake of simplicity, we'll keep the conversation simple.