Cody AI Service Robot
Service robot with facial recognition and tracking capabilities for human-robot interaction.
Oct 2023 - Jan 2024 (4 months)
Overview
As a member of Nano Stride, Concordia's AI and Robotics Club, I worked on developing Cody, our service robot. Though the club doesn't exist anymore, we nearly finished Cody. Our goal was to create an interactive guide for Concordia's main Hall building to help students and visitors find their way around.
I led the development of Cody's facial recognition and tracking system using Python and OpenCV. Being my first big project, it came with its challenges - especially getting everything to work in real-time and maintaining reliable tracking regardless of how many people were around. My biggest challenge? Getting Cody to figure out who was talking to it in group situations. I came up with a solution that combined a Timing Delay Of Arrival (TDOA) system with speech analysis. Basically, Cody could pinpoint where sound was coming from and match it with lip movements in that area, letting it identify who was speaking.
This project really leveled up my expertise in computer vision and AI. But what struck me most was discovering how fascinating and complex it is to build AI systems that interact naturally with humans. The experience solidified my passion for AI and robotics, giving me a strong foundation for everything that followed.
Challenges
- •Developing a system to identify the primary speaker among multiple people
- •Optimizing facial tracking algorithms for available budget and hardware
- •Managing large code collaboration within a mid-sized development team for the first time