What will you see – FIDO the robotic dog

By makerfairemilwaukee, Jul 30, 2014

Since a makerspace isn’t the safest place for a pet, Dennis decided to make a robotic one. FIDO (Fetch Interesting Deliverable Objects) is a robotic dog that fetches a ball and brings it back to you.

FIDO runs on the open-source Robot Operating System (ROS). It analyses video from it’s webcam, using openCV to find a round green object – the tennis ball. Once the ball is located, the computer communicates with the rolling platform electronics and the servos that control FIDO’s mouth to fetch and grab the ball.

Now FIDO has two options. It can either keep playing fetch with itself by throwing and retrieving the ball repeatedly. Or it uses facial recognition to find the owner and returns the ball.

You will be able to play with FIDO at Maker Faire Milwaukee and you don’t even have to worry about allergies! How awesome is that!