A dog robot appeared in MAI and became the assistant for artificial intelligence studies

A new resident appeared on the IT floor of the Moscow Aviation Institute – a robodog. Like a real dog, the pet can bark, follow people and obey to various commands – jump and turn in the air, roll over on the floor, which has already attracted the interest of students and schoolchildren participating in University Saturdays. However, the robot not only entertains MAI residents, but also becomes the object of IT experiments and the formation of skills to work with artificial intelligence.

– Robodog allows to create artificial intelligence solutions and has a virtual development environment, so students will be able to implement their projects on artificial intelligence, object recognition first on a digital double, and then on a physical model of a dog, — says Deputy Head of the IT Center Peter Ukhov. – In the near future, the robot will be taught to walk freely on the IT floor with obstacle avoidance, to recognize voices, for example, the command "give me your paw".

The robot model is being finalized at the IT Center and at the department 806 "Computational Mathematics and Programming" – a new friend is taught to be smart, more mobile and accessible for interaction.

– The robot can be used for such purposes as scanning premises, for example, to detect malfunctions of various systems at industrial facilities, as well as patrolling the perimeter and searching for intruders to a protected area, - says one of the project participants, Vadim Kondarattsev, the employee of the artificial intelligence laboratory of the Department 806 MAI. – Drones are able to perform the same functions, but a walking robot has a number of advantages over them: for example, it is able to enter places that are difficult for a drone to reach and has a longer battery life.

Now experts are setting up the ROS (robot operating system) to simplify the communication of students with a dog to complete projects. Separately, we purchased control boards for debugging codes and launching applications outside of the robodog.

– Robodog is a complex technical system with sensors and executing mechanisms, equipped with a developed software interface, which opens up the possibility of its integration into intelligent software and hardware complexes, for example, it can interact with a drone in monitoring tasks, - says the head of the department 806 "Computational Mathematics and Programming" Sergey Krylov. — Such work is carried out, among other things, as part of the students' final qualifying works of bachelor’s and master’s degrees, as well as diploma works by students of additional professional retraining programs (DPP) of the Digital Department project of MAI. Robodog allows to put into practice the digital competencies formed by the students of the DPP in the field of algorithmization and programming, computer vision, machine learning.

MAI students have already chosen a name by voting in social networks, the robot was named Dora. You can get acquainted and take a picture with her on the IT floor.