Driving with the world of Artificial Intelligence with Zumi

Artificial intelligence is the next big thing after coding and Programming. Humans constant urge to learn and understand beyond limit has put a robot on the moon. A robot that works on AI.

Artificial intelligence for Kids is turning around the scientific world early to the young minds.

Like programming and coding, artificial intelligence for kids is slowly stepping into an educational domain. Once believed to be inaccessible for the common people, AI is now almost everywhere. Amazon Alexa to Google maps, everything use artificial intelligence. Just like coding, AI has the ability to change the future and knowing more about the possibilities of the AI can give you an edge over the other skills required at a workplace.

Zumi educational robot is the solution that connects us now to the future needs. Zumi is a robotic car that simplifies artificial intelligence, making it accessible to kids to explore their curious and growing mind.

Robolink was a start up established in 2012, California. Their primary objective was to encourage kids to engage in STEM education system. Robolink makes robotic kits for kids to make them better understand computer science. Education through robots equip children to face the future and teach real industry competency. Robolink’s Zumi is the first self driving car kit that teaches kids artificial intelligence in a fun and engaging way. Following the instruction and tutorials, car can move around a miniature city and make it progress over time. The more the car learns, the better it gets! The teaching programme consist of programming and artificial intelligence taught with robots and collaborate with teachers and educators across the globe.

Zumi is designed to drive over a mock city, and children can code the zumi to navigate through streets and complete the task, such a delivering a micropizza. The greatest advantage of Zumi is that its constantly learning with the user. While moving on the track and if it recognises any obstacle, Zumi will avoid the obstacle while it transverse the path next time. The car robot can detect road markings and drive accordingly as per the directions provided.

Even though the whole system that Zumi contain looks more like a fun game, it needs to understand that these artificial intelligence and computer programming is used in real driverless cars. Behind the cute look Zumi robotic car is a serious technology that helps in understanding the functionality of real cars on the road. When the world is heading for driverless cars and zero emissions, Zumi is definitely the first brick.

Zumi is not just for kids to understand artificial intelligence. Zumi is built from a Raspberry Pi Zero which is also compatible with Arduino. The robot contains a gyrometer, accelerometer, two DC motors and six IR sensors, a buzzer, and a Pi cam. Zumi is working on OpenCV and TensorFlow methods. OpenCV is a library of programming functions used for computer vision where as TensorFlow is an open-source software library or symbolic math library used for machine learning applications such as neural network. Both OpenCV and TensorFlow is used for autonomous vehicles currently. Zumi can calculate optimal distances to a point, identifying objects and making stop / go decisions, gesture recognition, and face recognition. It is believed that Zumi can one day classify objects and human gestures.

Zumi, the educational car. Zumi educational car can learn constantly with its user and therefore it can adapt to new obstacles. The various options a Zumi car can do are as follows:

● Zumi can be programmed to calculate and use the optimal route on the road

● Zumi can be programmed to identify obstacles on the road and act accordingly

● Zumi can be trained to recognize the movements of your hand to follow the directions you will indicate with

● Zumi can be trained to recognize your face as that of your friends or family The whole system may not look serious when considered as an educational robot. But Zumi has lead way to accessing artificial intelligence in a more understandable way. This is more than enough to encourage young minds to pursue a future with coding, programming or AI.