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Toymaker The Crafty Robot creates battery free paper robots that can move. Their latest design – Smartibot – is the world’s first cardboard robot powered by Artificial Intelligence.

Designed for both adults and children, Smartibot is a DIY robot that educates users in robotics. Its accompanying app – Smartibot app – allows users to control the Smartibot via their smartphones. As well as using smartphones as a remote control for the robot, users can attach their mobiles to the robot. This enables smartphones to act as the robot’s brain. The Smartibot app uses YOLO, an Artificial Intelligence that acts as the robot’s eyes. It can recognise objects such as people, animals and vehicles. Therefore users can program their Smartibots to automatically follow around any object they choose.

Smartibot is build-able using almost any household item. For example, users can attach the circuit board, batter box and motors to a vegetable or a toy. Smartibot can be as simple or as complex as the user desires. With the choice of wheels, legs, arms, cars and even hovercrafts, Smartibot gives users creative flexibility. In addition, Smartibot does not require coding knowledge as users can design custom controllers for their robots via the app. Moreover, Smartibot comes with enough cardboard parts to build two additional robots – Teabot and Unicorn. Teabot is a drinks delivery robot, bringing you tea, coffee or any drink you desire. The Unicorn robot features a stripy pink cardboard horn.

Currently crowdfunding on Kickstarter, the campaign has been a success, reaching nearly double their pledge goal. The expected release date for Smartibot is December 2018. Other advancements in robotics that have been featured on Springwise include a robot restaurant server and a robot parking valet. With AI and robotics increasingly powering the world we live in, what other innovations can enable us to better understand this technology?