While CyPhy isn’t among the army of drones in the tech spotlight at CES 2015 in Las Vegas this week, its drone program is being closely watched as its founder helped brand and bring robots into the home as the co-creator of the Roomba, the robotic vacuum cleaner that launched 1,000mobile kitty videos.
Recently named to the CNBC Next list, Grenier co-founded iRobot, whose technology helped the U.S. military set off bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Guardian notes in a profile.
On the consumer front, iRobot’s smart home products are still best known for the Roomba, which has sold 10 million units. Sixty percent of those Roombas, by the way, have been given names by their owners.
At her six-year old CyPhy startup, Grenier is still coming up with pithy product names (such as “The Department of Failed Good Intentions”).
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, or even use Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for MakeCode, CircuitPython, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell with Google Hangouts On-Air is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
