There was a lot of excitement when the Google AIY arrived, since (once we got it working) it was going to be the method of controlling our robot that gives us the most points! It's also just an interesting piece of kit so that was fun too (I promise I enjoy coding, I don't only care about winning).
Recap: One of the challenges - Up The Garden Path - offers several different ways to gain points for controlling your robot:
Remote Control (yawn)
Line following (easy)
Dead Reckoning (that means setting the robot on a path and hoping it gets to the other end, so, guesswork)
Camera (like getting it to look for QR codes or coloured stickers on the walls and floors and reacting to them)
Voice Control (TOP POINTS)
Anyway, back to the AIY Kit...
It arrived in a box unassembled, so we spent a whole afternoon building it and hooking it up to the WiFi.
As you can see my dad doesn't have any proper tools. Safety warning: ask your parents before you use a giant kitchen knife instead of a screwdriver.
Our Google AIY was having a bit of trouble with the voice activation at the start, so it wasn't listening to us :( but we did some hacking to get around that problem :)
Once we got it working, we asked Google to take care of the rest of the robot-building project because we were tired.
We played some jokes on my brother too, like making it speak when he was the only one in the room. He didn't find it very funny but deep down I'm sure he appreciated the effort.