[Andrew] has enjoyed the company of [Pepper] the parrot for more than a decade, but the screeching of a bird in the next room is something you just don’t get used to. [Pepper] gets very lonely some times, and short of having someone carry him around on a shoulder, there’s not much that will calm this parrot down. [Andrew] had the idea of allowing [Pepper] to wander around the house with the help of a mobile platform. Thus was born the Bird Buggy, a parrot-controlled vehicle built just for [Pepper].
The buggy itself is a basic two-wheel drive platform driven with a small beak-compatible joystick mounted just forward of [Pepper]’s perch. With this system, it’s possible for [Pepper] to follow [Andrew] through the house. [Andrew] wanted to make sure [Pepper] couldn’t drive into walls or table legs, so a suite of sensors on the front stops the buggy whenever an object is detected.
One very cool feature of the bird buggy is its ability to drive itself to a recharging station. It does this with the help of a webcam and OpenCV and a pair of markers just behind the charging port. When the Beagleboard on the buggy sees the green and yellow markers for the charging port align, it knows its directly in front of the charging port.
You can see [Pepper] driving his new whip around after the break, along with a very cool demo of the bird buggy docking with its charging port.
