About myself and HelloSpoon development.
First of all, thanks for visit this blog entry! It will help you to know who I am, why I'm doing this and what's the goal behind HelloSpoon robot.
My name is Luis Samahi Garcia Gonzalez, I'm a recently graduated 23 years old Mechatronics Engineer from Mexico and I'm the developer, designer, programmer and crazy guy behind HelloSpoon robot.
I've had the chance to being fully involved into research projects related to Robotics and AI here in Mexico since I was 20 years old, like humanoid robots, house keeping robots, artificial vision for embedded systems and stuff like that non-related to industrial robotics.
Here's a link to my Youtube channel so you can take a look:
https://www.youtube.com/user/fokloiisx/videos
Also I had the chance to participate in International Robotics Competitions representing my country and winning some awards for autonomous humanoid robots categories.
Here's one picture from South Korea on IRC (International Robotics Contest) in 2012:
You might think oh that's cool! Why aren't you doing that anymore?
Actually I still do that (sort of) and it's named HelloSpoon :-)!
Why I decided to start to build a robot like HelloSpoon? At the time I started I was recovering myself of a wise teeth surgery and started to interest myself on rehab robotics.
I found little info about feeding machines and what I saw was not really interesting, also very expensive and it looked like a good challenge create something with the same core but innovate and create a robot never seen and unique at the same time.
That's how HelloSpoon was born as a simple robotic arm in a wooden box and then it was evolving to become a supportive feeding machine, a cute companion. While I know it could not appeal to everybody, I knew that there's a place in the market for a solution like HelloSpoon. Actual solutions and HelloSpoon can perfectly coexist in the same environment because both reach users with different profiles.
I knew that with my skills I could be able to create a robot, a robot friend to be more specific that can help people in need. And that's basically, how HelloSpoon was born 1.5 years ago here in my bedroom in Sinaloa, Mexico.
Let me share with you a few pictures of my workspace (my bedroom) where I've been working really hard to create an appealing enough solution that can interact with people. Sometimes you don't need a big laboratory to start something great don't you think? :-)
So that basically wraps up everything :-)!
Of course there's so much to say but this is the most important.
I hope you can feel that I'm capable enough to develop a robot like HelloSpoon, if I've been working for 1.5 years without any support or spotlight I guess it shows how decided I'm to make HelloSpoon a reality and a success.
YOU can help me to reach that, so it will be our victory and that will feel so much better that still doing it all by my own :-).
Thanks for reading! I hope you can donate and spread the word so more people will know and support this development!