IxiPlay:基于安卓智能儿童机器人是一个针对儿童开发一款基于Android的智能机器人。儿童可以跟它一起玩游戏，它会向儿童展示机器人卡片，也会模仿儿童的表情。该机器人玩具具有视觉和听觉，也能说话和移动。

这个创业公司来自荷兰，两个创始人Bart Dirkx和Ruud van der Aalst认为现在的孩子在屏幕面前待的时间太长了却没有真正的收获，在申请今年YC的夏季项目之前，他们已经做出了一个产品的原型，一只类似猫头鹰的玩具机器人。它的目标是让这个机器人成为1-6岁的男孩、1-8岁的女孩的朋友，除了能根据孩子讲话的内容和孩子互动甚至教孩子学习，还可以让家长不在家的时候通过相连的软件看到孩子在家做什么。

这是一个基于Android平台的机器人，基本配置如下:在Android 4.2平台上，双核，ARM A9处理器，1GB RAM，使用720p摄像头。我今天在Ixi-play两个创始人在硅谷Sunnyvale租的办公室里见到这个玩具机器人——一只猫头鹰，现在运行它需要一个主机，以及音响和电脑，它能做到的是识别图片、声音，并作出反应，例如创始人Bart Dirkx向我演示时拿了一些写着表情和文字的卡片，例如在它眼前放生气的卡片，上面有一个生气的表情，它就会作出类似生气的反应;如果在它眼前放一只羊的照片，它就会发出羊的叫声等。

当然所有的反应都是靠程序来控制，也是Bart Dirkx和Ruud van der Aalst预先设置好的，机器人捕捉和识别眼前图片或文字的能力来自来自硬件的配置，在它的眼睛和额头里分别有一个摄像头，头顶有一个感应器，考虑到针对的用户是孩子，机器人的身体是柔软的橡胶材质。在Bart Dirkx和Ruud van der Aalst开始写程序来控制这个机器人的时候，分别和莱顿大学、代尔夫特理工大学和霍芬大学合作获得研究的数据。再用机器学习的第一步——人先来教机器，两个创始人对我说目前他们还没有限制这个机器人能识别的表情和文字，未来也会开放SDK给开发者以获得更多的应用来使用它。

With ixi-play we bring you an advanced robot technology for an affordable price. We carefully investigated all the available consumer robot products in the market and decided we should do better. To meet the requirements for the user experience we think you should have, we had to design our platform from scratch. To offer agile and silent body motion in combination with high robustness (child-proof) we developed a special motion engine.

The camera input is used for face, card and object detection and recognition. The microphone is well suited for voice recognition and beat detection while moving. We added a touch sensor in the head and made sure you have decent sound output via the combination of a tweeter in the head and a woofer in the base. To give ixi-play the ability to show emotions we added two small displays with designed lenses to add to the expressivess of the eye animations. We also made sure you can connect ixi-play to your computer, tablet or smartphone via WiFi. Bluetooth enables you to connect your keyboard, mouse or other devices too.

Ixi-play is an Android device by itself. To make it easy for you to develop your own apps, we have taken care of the low-level stuff, like advanced motion control and some vision processing. For Android developers we will provide a Software Development Kit that takes care of this enabling you to easily write your own Apps, just like you would normally do for your tablet or smartphone and make ixi-play do amazing things. So don't wait and become part of our developers community!