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DFRobot CurieNano emphasises the reliability of new micro-controller board for artificial intelligence

For the past few years, from AlphaGo to Tesla, artificial intelligence has posed challenges to human wisdom time and again. At the end of 2016, a mysterious Internet chess player “Master” became sensational.

From last December 29th to January 3rd this year, in the fight against apex players from China and Japan, “Master” achieved amazing scores of 50 wins and 0 lose, refreshing people’s view on artificial intelligence.

Who would have thought this seemingly unreachable technology became a feast for the eyes nationwide in 2017? It is the application of artificial intelligence that has made the performance of ‘Refreshing Breeze’ at the CCTV New Year’s Gala stunning.

With light steps and graceful gestures, 160 or more dancers deftly maneuvered the crystal balls in their hands. The crystal balls, as if enchanted with magic, changed colors with gestures and movements, creating a magic, charming and unified spectacle.

The large-scale dance performance, though without any famous stars, was widely acclaimed by the audience. Except for its superb artistry, the intelligent gloves dancers wear are the finishing touch. What is the magic trick to these gloves?

The secret is the master controller of DFRobot CurieNano that carried with LED luminous panels in the dancers’ gloves. With the reliable performance of DFRobot CurieNano, dancers could simply change the colors of the LED lights in their palms by turning the wrists.

As if enchanted with magic, 160 crystal balls with the same color LED lights were lightened up all at once. Then how to identify the dancer’s movements without making any errors, and “wake up”the LED lights at the right moment?

The problem is solved by the six-axis acceleration sensor contained in Intel® Curie™ chip used by the DFRobot CurieNano primary controller in the gloves. The six-axis acceleration sensor, as accelerometer and gyroscope, could identify postures by detecting the motion state of moving forward and backward, turning left and right, and going upwards and downwards.

Besides, DFRobot CurieNano primary controller was also equipped with a three-axis geomagnetic sensor to identify the specific facing direction more precisely.

By taking the advantage of nine-axis attitude transducer, the qualified DFRobot CurieNano could precisely identify the dancers’ movements. The LED lights were ‘awakened’ by the change of postures through neuron algorithm. The Intel® Curie™ chip contained 128 neurons which could turn motion state into color signals of LED lights.

Seeing dancers wearing gloves in dress rehearsal, engineers could input continuous dancing posture signals into Curie’s “mind”, while constantly “reminding” Curie of the correspondence between each dance movement and light color, so as to establish Curie’s “memory”.

According to different rotation angles performed by dancers, every Curie™ needs to be ‘trained’ individually. It is to ensure when music starts, as dancers in different positions change postures, LED lights of the same color will be on display by themselves at the same time.

The crystal balls, against the backdrop of LED lights could display perfect stage effect. This theory is similar to the learning process of new born baby who knows nobody. For example, mother will ask the baby to look at her and teach him by saying: “I’m your mum…call me mum…mum…”Through repeated training, baby then knows the person before him is called ‘mum’.

Additionally, the data classification function in Neuron algorithm could solve errors and identify similar movements to a large extent. Although every dancer’s posture varied, with the help of this function, even without repeated training by humans, neuron could still analyse automatically and respond in time. For example, our mum may change hairstyle and dresses sometime, we can still identify who she is.

This is the first time components from DFRobot were involved in the New Year’s Gala, which shows not only the technology of AI draws more and more attention, but also the reliable quality of DFRobot products are highly recognised by public. Since 2008, DFRobot has engaged in the research, development and production of open-source hardware.

As the world-leading open-source hardware corporation, DFRobot has maintained sound cooperative relations with Intel Corporation all the year round. The motherboard of this model of CurieNano is what DFRobot has researched, developed, and produced based on Intel® Curie™ chip. It is also the star product in the DFRobot store.

Besides, the official store of DFRobot provides more than 1000 cost-effective open-source hardware products and relevant tutorials for engineers and developers, escorting the birth of more “black technology”.

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