A robot based on a $1,600 do-it-yourself kit, a...

A robot based on a $1,600 do-it-yourself kit, a Braille printer, 3D printed shoes and clothes, and a smart construction helmet were some of the Intel-powered projects demoed at a private pop-up Maker Faire Friday in New York before World Maker Faire New York, running Sept. 20-21 in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Queens, New York, site of the 1964-65 World’s Fair. Maker Faire is one of 100 such shows around the world, with the New York version alone expected to draw 80,000-90,000 attendees. Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said the company’s goal with a Maker Faire sponsorship “is to provide the tech tools” that allow makers to create or invent fun or useful products that could be commercialized down the road. Matt Trossen, CEO of Trossen Robotics, showed a commercialized product, the Endoskeleton, which will begin shipping in January. The goal of the kit is to lower the bar of entry for robotics, Trossen said. Building a robot requires mechanical and electronics engineering, along with computer science and software programming skills. Trossen aims to have that “low-level” work done so developers can work on robotics at a high level. Intel’s Edison chip provides the processing power, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth integration that “allows us to take care of all of the plumbing underneath” so people can program on tablets, PCs and smartphones and then write “high-level” languages, he said. Kit owners could be running “and programming life into a robot in a matter of weeks rather than a year,” he said. Creating a robot typically takes a year to figure out how to control servos and other aspects of robotics when many developers “just want to create life and do fun stuff,” he said. The kit brings the price of creating a robot to levels never reached before, Trossen said, and then creators buy “shells” online to give the robot personality, look and feel. “Everybody’s going to want to do something different,” he said. Some will want an interactive robot, some will care about the face and arms and some will want to mount sensors, he said.