Patents on the soles of your shoes...: Oh, patents! Buddy

Wednesday, October 25, 2017

Oh, patents! Buddy

Buddy the Companion Robot, created by Blue Frog Robotics, is cute, customizable, and way smarter than your phone!

Masterminded as a spinoff project by Rodolphe Hasselvander, former Head of R&D at the CRIIF – Centre de robotique intégrée en Ile de France (Ile-de-France Center for Integrated Robotics - Robotics and Connected Objects Design Office) and business partner Franck De Visme, Buddy is best described by Tarantola at Engadget.com as “a cross between R2D2’s versatility and Wall-E’s emotive ability”, to which you might add a bit of “ET” cuteness.

Depending on how Buddy is programmed, what accessories are added, or what apps are downloaded and created, just tap this little companion robot's face and it will vacuum, patrol your house to detect fires, burglars and floods, send you alerts, be remotely controlled, turn lights on and off, remind you to do things, answer calls, wake you up in the morning, play your favorite music, tutor your kids in maths and spelling, play hide and seek, follow you around the house, store all your recipes, play video games, read stories, keep your pets entertained while you are at work, and serve as a platform for all your apps -- all of this with the cutest and most endearing user interface, and in several languages too! Buddy was also successfully tested with autistic children.

One patent family was found on file for Blue Frog Robotics, WO2015197926A2 titled, Method of determining a geometrical transformation between two models of a three-dimensional object, although Rodolphe Hasselvander has several industrial robotics patents on file, from previous lifetimes.

Otherwise, Buddy is open source, powered by Unity 3D and Android software, and free range, which means that the community of developers is invited to create more apps and accessories, for Buddy, in ways analogous to the development of smartphone apps, and accessories.

The abstract for this patent is included below, with a cute Buddy companion video showing the little robot, and residential ally.

The invention relates to a method of determining a geometrical transformation between a first model of a three-dimensional object and a second model of the three-dimensional object, said first model being obtained on the basis of a first measurement instrument, said method comprising: a first step (E1) of defining the second model; a second step of defining at least one invariant reference point between the first model and the second model; a third step (E3) of slicing the first model and the second model with respect to said invariant reference point, said first model being sliced into a first cloud of points, said second model being sliced into a second cloud of points; and a fourth step (301) of determining the geometrical transformation between the first cloud of points and the second cloud of points. [Abrstract WO2015197926A2]