Google Alto, a little robot that teaches what machine learning is
O Google has launched a robot for you to build at home. But if you think that Alto is only used to sweep the floor, you're wrong: this small “teachable object”, as the company itself refers to it, has the main function of showing users how to program an intelligent machine. The entire project is done by Google CreativeLab open source and can be adapted by whoever wants to build it. The idea is that the user learns the basics of how to teach a machine and can apply this to other types of hardware.
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To teach this little Optimus Prime you need TensorFlow, a software built by Google itself for applications in artificial intelligence. Google Alto is basically a box with two arms, a camera and a button. It is able to recognize objects, raising one arm when it identifies one and the other arm when it identifies another.
Image: Google
“Alto (a tiny teachable object) is an open-source AI experiment. It introduces you to the fundamentals of machine learning while helping you build your own teachable object. You can teach Alto to recognize things by pressing one of the buttons on the side. Once Alto sees something you’ve taught it, it will point to it with one of its arms,” the project description reads.
If you want to make Alto you can download the code and all the programs on the Google Creative Lab page, the model also teaches how to assemble and customize each piece of the little robot. Building the Google Alto is relatively affordable abroad, but here it is a bit difficult, because the main, and most expensive, part of the project is a Coral USB Accelerator board, which is not sold here in Brazil and needs to be imported. While the product can originally be obtained for US$ 60 (something in the range of R$ 320), here it is sold for up to R$ 1000. In addition to the board, you need a Raspberry Pi, a minicomputer that can be purchased for around R$ 300.
