OAK-D EDU

[Luxonis-Brandon]

Start with the why:

Cortic Technology, here has been using OAK-D for K-12 education. He is on a mission to get this tech to K-12. He’s done a lot of these education series and has discovered what is actually needed in the market to have this sort of technology accessible by K-12 students. And what are the big pain-points and blockers.

One of the key needed bits is easy software. Cortic has been working on the software to make this applicable to K-12 (e.g. here), but there are hardware parts that are really really painful still. And if those are solved, he thinks this could scalably be applied across education.

And it looks great and will work fantastically for this. I’ve (Brandon has) done 1st-grade Hour of Code with such interfaces before.

In K-12 education settings there is a need for a “just works” spatial AI system where everything is included. Since it is kids working with it, it needs to be all enclosed, simple, and boot up and just work.

The use-case is on a robot like here:
https://twitter.com/CorticTechnolo1/status/1386761565475545092?s=20

And the robotics portions of these robots are actually controlled over Bluetooth or WiFi. So no electrical connection is needed.

And in fact, it is preferred to have the whole perception/host-compute/etc. battery powered so that it can be built into the lego/etc. anywhere on the bot - without wiring concerns/mess/etc. Ad wireless control of the bot allows.

One of the most painful parts of using such a system is getting the headless going - meaning getting remote desktop connection going. So the feedback from Ye Lu is that having an enclosed product with an integrated battery, a single USB port (for charging), a built-in screen, and WiFi/BT for communication would be super helpful.

This would allow the product to boot up w/out any cables, show the demo right away on the screen so that students can see how the computer is seeing. And then from there, configure the device to do things and see how the computer sees things.

And having IMU, microphones, and speaker on the device will allow students to explore other aspects of interaction all on-device. Motion, audio input, audio output for feedback and or allowing students to construct interactive games with the robot.

Since this device will be used in education, it would be beneficial for it to be able to mount directly to legos.

Move to the how:

Leverage the CM4 designs we have (OAK-CM4-POE) to make a DepthAI + CM4 integrated product, leveraging the battery charge/discharge we have from the experimental 1092+LiPo work we did.

Use the CM4 with built-in eMMC so students can store video/etc. to the device for as long as the battery lasts (does not need to be any longer than that).

Use the CM4’s capability to drive a display to have an integrated display on the back.

Design an aluminum enclosure to help dissipate heat and make this easy/rugged for users and keep it cool enough.

Leverage the microphone design (likely using just a stereo pair of mics - that’s enough probably) and speaker design from the DM2092.

Move to the what:

All-in-one enclosed product with:

• Cameras:
• World-facing:
  • 2x OV7251
  • 1x IMX214
• User-facing:
  • 1x IMX214
• Touchscreen
• Internal battery (5,000mAh?)
• CM4 host
• eMMC storage TBD size
• WiFi, and
• BT
• Stereo Microphone (connected to DepthAI)
• Speaker (connected to DepthAI)
• Aluminum Enclosure
• BNO086 IMU
• Single USB3C port
• Tripod mount on bottom
• 7.5cm spaced M4 mounting on bottom
• Power switch
• Multi-purpose programmable button
• Lego technic mount holes around (TBD) to allow mounting directly to legos.
  

USB3C port:

• It would be nice for the USB port to act like on phones:
  • Can be used for charging, but also as a host powering attached devices (mouse/keyboard for the simpler cases).
  • And if the y-adapter is used, it could act as a "docking station": charging the battery, but also functioning as a host.

Initial Concept below: