Google recently partnered up with KIDMob in support of a weeklong Superhero Boost workshop, providing access to its AIY Projects toolkit and engineers to help fuel the creativity of children with limb-based disabilities. KIDMob has put on its design workshops for four years with a focus on getting kids active in fields of design ranging from studies of technology to learning about design tools themselves. This year, the organization pulled in assistance from Google and Autodesk for the workshop and placed emphasis on enabling the above-mentioned children to design their own super-powered wheelchair accessories or prosthetic enhancements. Autodesk hosted the gathering and provided ready access to 3D printers which were used by Googlers and the kids to give the latter group a first-hand look at the rapid prototyping process. The engineers also helped with programming and soldering tasks required to bring the creations to life.
The search giant says that the children described the process of going hands-on with the creation of A.I. implementations as being akin to wizardry. For those who may not be aware, AIY Projects is a DIY offering meant for tinkering with and building voice-controlled A.I. experiments and devices. Two versions are made available through the program, including one for voice interactions and another for machine vision. By the end of the workshop, the joint efforts had resulted in a multi-tool for design projects, an object retrieval arm, and a light-up accessory for nighttime bike rides or wheelchair navigating. Each of those was driven by AIY Projects’ voice interactive kit, which is powered by Google Assistant.
Aside from availability in either a Voice Kit or Vision Kit, AIY Projects offers several different models of machine learning. All of those are categorized for use with the Vision Kit since the other is primarily a way to connect hardware to the company’s digital assistant. Those include recognition models for faces, complete with a “Joy Score” algorithm, or for differentiating between pets and people. Aside from that, machine learning is available for classifying images, including a completely separate classifier for foodies called the Dish Classifier. Finally, the last kit is designed to identify species in nature and provide a score for how certain the A.I. is about its guess.