The goal was to build a platform that was small-scale and cute yet still preserved the real scientific challenges inherent in a full-scale real autonomous robot platform.
The first class had 24 students and culminated with a year-end demo in a full sized hockey rink. There were over 3000 visitors.
In the meantime, all of the pieces of the experience (the slides, the demos, the platform, the software) were made openly available and other institutions began to take interest.
The platform has since been used at several universities around the globe, including NCTU in Taiwan, Tsinghua in China, and RPI in the United States among many others.
The result was a coordinated global demo that showcased the students’ achievements.
To achieve this, we needed to make the Duckietown platform cheaper, easier to obtain and able to provide more learning experiences and opportunities for performing cutting edge research.
To achieve this objective we launched a successful kickstarter campaign and we now have an easier way for people to acquire the hardware.
AI-DO2 will be held at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) in May 2019.