Personal Robot Using Android Smartphone

Various kinds of services are offered by using smartphones. Smartphones are usually carried throughout the day and are held by hand when they are used. However, it is convenient that smartphones are close by when they are necessary and do not need to carry them in other cases. In this paper, a smartphone was connected to a personal robot, which approaches a person when needed. Mindstorms NXT was adopted as an interface for a robot to move. The actions of the robot were decided by a smartphone, and the movement was ordered to Mindstorms NXT using Bluetooth connection. A camera on the smartphone was used for the decision of the robot action. The effectiveness of the personal robot was shown by experiment.