Aire — A Self-Flying Robotic Assistant for the Home
About this project
Aire — Cutting-edge Robotics in a Human-friendly Package.
The world's first intelligent robotic home assistant with autonomous flight, voice-only commands, anomaly detection, security alerts and much more.
Aire's ability to fly enables easy navigation over or around obstacles and even between multiple floors of a home.
With simple hands-free voice commands and minimalist smartphone app flight controls, anyone can easily control Aire from home or away, with no piloting experience required.
With its sophisticated flight navigation, patented noise-reduction technology, 360° panoramic photos, Amazon Alexa integration, anomaly detection alerts, hands-free voice commands and programmable IFTTT capabilities, Aire re-imagines personal home robotics.
Our 2.5 year and $3,000,000 development journey:
Our founder, Jeffrey Tseng, explains the challenges Aire had to overcome to navigate complex home environments.
Cutting-edge hardware, processors, and technology similar to that in self-driving cars allow Aire to revolutionize home automation, smart assistants, home monitoring and personal robotics:
- Flight — Localization and obstacle avoidance sensors allow you to fly Aire safely through your home, to any floor and back to its dock.
- Intelligence — Aire gets smarter over time by learning new skills through over-the-air updates and leveraging IFTTT automation or Amazon Alexa.
- Security — Receive anomaly alerts so that you can launch Aire to inspect alerts, monitor loved ones and more.
- Photography — Capture HD photos, 360° Panoramas, 4K videos, or live stream with Aire as your personal photographer.
- Control — Simple app flight controls, voice commands and sensors enable flight autonomy; no piloting experience needed.
Unlike any other robot — from propeller, to fabric, to electronics — Aire was designed to effortlessly move anywhere in your home.
The ideal personal home robotics platform:
Updateable skills make it smarter over time:
We believe personal robots designed for the home will enhance our daily lives and offer peace of mind.
Building a self-flying robot that navigates well in complex home environments was technically challenging. We had to incorporate new hardware (like the processors in self-driving cars), cutting edge robotics and computer vision software.
By overcoming these engineering challenges, Aire became the first in a brand new product category with a whole new frontier of possibilities.
Indoor Flight Localization
Numerous cameras and computer vision algorithms allow Aire to safely navigate anywhere in your home.
Aire uses multiple cameras, sonar, onboard IMU sensors and complex algorithms to determine its position, similar to "inside out tracking" technology of AR/VR headsets and what self-driving cars use to determine location.
Home Security - Investigate, Patrol and Monitor
Discover what is going on in your home, rental property, or office while you're away. Even monitor pets and loved ones remotely.
All Kickstarter backers will receive free lifetime premium cloud storage for recording security live-streams. Check out a few examples of how Aire can secure your home:
- Alert Investigation — Upon receiving an alert, take off, travel to any room or floor of your home to investigate the alert.
- Virtual Visits — Watch live video streams while Aire is in-flight or docked for remote monitoring of your home or loved ones.
- Live Monitoring — Watch live video streams while Aire is in-flight or docked.
- Anomaly Alerts — Anomaly detection listens for loud noises or unexpected motion while docked and notifies user via smartphone.
Virtual Visits and Remote Check-Ins
Discover what's really going on at home while you're away with remote audio and video to check in.
Check out a few ways you can add peace of mind with Aire's remote check-ins:
- "Mom isn’t picking up. Is she OK?" — Aire can search upstairs and downstairs for Mom and you can even speak to her when you find her.
- "Did I leave the stove on?" — Don’t worry, just check. Send Aire to your kitchen so you can see that the stove is off.
- "Is there someone in my home?" — After returning from vacation, check your house before going in with a remote security patrol.
Amazon Alexa and IFTTT Integration
By integrating Amazon Alexa and IFTTT, you can control Aire with hands-free voice commands while automating other IoT devices.
- Amazon Alexa Skills - Using Aire with Alexa is as simple as speaking a voice command to prompt any number of skills. Here are a few examples:
- "Alexa, ask Aire to go into camera mode" — Aire will take off from its dock and be ready to receive commands.
- "Alexa, ask Aire to come here and take a picture" — Aire will rotate where it is, look for a face, then approach it to take a picture.
- "Alexa, ask Aire to go home" — Aire will return to its home, dock and start charging.
IFTTT Automation Capabilities - By creating IFTTT Applets, Aire has the ability to interact with IoT devices throughout your home with triggers:- Dark Room Flight — If Aire senses the room is dark, then turn on Philips Hue lights.
- Anomaly Detected — If Aire detects strange motion, then start recording video.
- 360° Panorama Taken — If Aire captures a 360° panorama photo, then save it to Google Drive.
Premium Cloud Services
New Skills and Capability Updates
After overcoming the technical challenges of home navigation, photography and home monitoring were the first skills we taught Aire.
Possibilities are Endless As new users provide feedback, new IoT devices become popular and our API becomes available, Aire will unlock its full hardware capabilities through simple over-the-air updates.Here are some features that are possible with over-the-air updates:- Virtual Home Mapping — Allows Aire to build a map, recognize the environment (room shape and size) and its own position within it to perform fully-autonomous flight functions.
- Autonomous Navigation — Vision-based Simultaneous Localization And Mapping (VSLAM) and depth sensors allow Aire to understand its environment and plan a path to navigate through it.
- Security Patrols — Schedule and conduct routine flights patrols within your home to inspect for any unusual activity by command or autonomously before arriving home.
- Return Home — Navigate to its dock even if it's not in the same room by manual command or at low battery.
- User Feedback — Leave us a comment with ideas for what you'd like to see. We'll be using your feedback to make Aire even better.
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Aire's powerful processor, advanced flight sensors and complex propulsion system makes it unique, it is not your typical "drone".
"Ducted Fan" Propulsion System for Safety and Efficiency When engineering a self-flying robot that is specifically designed for indoor flight around people, the core characteristics must change.Unlike traditional drones, our primary focus was on safety, sound quality and home aesthetics while attempting not to sacrifice speed, flight-time and range."Ducted Fan" Propulsion System
Ducted system are not as common as quadcopter propulsion arrangements due to complexity, but offer safety, efficiency and size features perfect for indoor flight.
Single Motor and Single Propeller A "ducted fan" arrangement is a mechanical fan (propeller) mounted within a cylindrical shroud or duct, similar to a jet engine. By integrating a ducted propulsion system, we had to create a flight controller specifically designed to adjust altitude and velocity with thrust vectoring.
Aerial View of Aire's Propeller System The benefits of Aire's ducted fan propulsion design:- Safely hides the propellers internally.
- Reduces thrust loss from propeller tips.
- Conducive to sound reduction technologies.
Whispertech™ Quiet Flight Technology
Aire employs patented, cutting-edge noise reduction technology developed at Aevena, making it better-sounding than any drone on the market.Airflow, prop, and acoustic testing resulted in the generation of almost white noise. Aire is dramatically quieter after designing airflow aerodynamics to reduce noise, implementing acoustic shielding fabrics/material into the body and testing dozens of propeller sizes/designs.Additionally, we increased the quality of the remaining sound produced from Aire by using White Noise Frequency Shaping Technologies that alter sound frequency profiles, making Aire psychoacoustically much quieter, so that the human auditory system filters it. In the end, Aire sounds like an indoor fan, not a quadcopter's aggressive buzzing (swarm of bees) sound caused by the "beat frequency effect" of four props moving at different speeds while maneuvering.**Please note that the current Functional Prototype, as seen in the Prototype Gallery videos, has not yet incorporated all of our noise reduction technologies. The noise will be further reduced in the production version.Flight Capabilities and Sensors
With advanced optical and sonar sensors, Aire is capable of multiple levels of autonomy for reliable worry-free flight.
Sonar Sensors for Obstacle Avoidance Aire's intelligent flight modes make complex piloting maneuvers easy with simple commands for flight autonomy:- 360° Obstacle Avoidance — Unlike most outdoor drones with only forward facing detection, Aire uses a forward facing 3D camera and sonar sensors all around to detect and avoid obstacles.
- Auto-docking/takeoff — Automatically take off from the dock, conduct flight operations and automatically dock itself when the dock is within visual range of Aire.
- Multiple Dock Landing — Aire can identify and then land on any dock that is with the field of view of the downward facing camera.
Voice-Commands or Remote Flight Controls
Advanced computer vision and obstacle avoidance sensors allows hands-free voice flight commands and/or simple app based flight control.
Voice or Smartphone Control Due to the transmission lag over the internet, real-time remote control navigation is normally not practical or safe, especially for indoor environments. However, Aire’s Navigational intelligence and 360° Obstacle Avoidance technologies make this not only possible, but easy.Remote App Flight - Fly manually from anywhere in the world:Manual Flight Control - First Person View on App. Voice-Command Flight - Fly by voice using Amazon Alexa:
Performance, safety and navigation complexities for indoor flight required special engineering and design features.
Aire Atop Charging Dock
In partnership with HUGE design, the Aevena team set out to make a product that is truly revolutionary in the field of robotics without compromising aesthetics.Engineered to be Safe and Human-Friendly
Specifically designed for indoor flight around people, Aire is a platform that has been meticulously engineered from the ground up for safety in the home.
Concealed Single Propeller Design for Safety Each element of Aire has been strategically planned from the lipped top curve that acts as a wing for increased flight efficiency to the outer fabric that hides multiple sensors and makes it an unobtrusive and sleek addition to your home.- LED Ring Lights — Aire’s ring light, sounds and light characteristics have all been designed to effectively communicate Aire's intentions and actions to users creating an interactive experience.
- Materials, Research and Innovation — Aire has some very strict weight, noise, heat and structural constraints. This meant finding materials that are lightweight enough to fly and still look aesthetically pleasing, but with a strong enough structure to support our flight and sensor requirements.
VR User Experience Testing
With our proprietary VR simulation tool "holodeck," we’ve been able to rapidly iterate on the user experience.5 minute VR user experience testing. From the moment our customers take the product out of the box to the first flight, and from the look and feel of the lights and sounds to the way Aire flies, we’ve done extensive user testing on everything to design the perfect product.Aire Versus Other Systems
Aire Compared to Other Security Systems - Privacy — Allows for one unit per home without placing stationary cameras throughout the home in sensitive areas.
- Blind Spots — Eliminates areas with no coverage from stationary cameras with limited fields of view due to camera angle.
Docking Station
Simply land Aire on the charging surface and the high current charging will refill the battery in under 30 minutes.
FLI Charge Partnership for Specialized Charging Dock FLI Charge's patented charging surface allows Aire to charge on contact, meaning you will never have to worry about charging cables or pluggin in. Aire doesn't even need to be perfectly aligned after landing in order to charge either.The charging dock surface is aerodynamically optimized to reduce ground effects, translating to smoother and more precise takeoff and landings.Additional charging docks will be available for purchase in the future.
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Aire relies on advanced hardware and software, similar to the technology used in self-driving cars.
The Most Powerful Processors Ever in a Personal Robot AIRE DESIGN AND SOFTWARE SPECS
- Robot Main Chassis — 12" x 12" x 13" and 12" x 12" x 16" including top/bottom padding.
- Robot Weight — 3.5 pounds
- Dock Dimensions - 18" x 18" x 24"
- Dock Weight — 7 pounds
- Propulsion — Internal ducted fan arrangement
- Noise Frequency Shaping — Mechanical fan (propeller) mounted within a cylindrical shroud or duct.
- Mobile Application — Compatible with iOS and Android devices
- Skill Updates — Over the air updates with the latest integrations.
The Prototype Journey
We built a prototype with a quadcopter platform for starting software development before we had our own design completed.Prototypes...we built a lot of them. We have many sound prototypes to do research and improve the sound quality. We have flight prototypes to develop our unique flying robot platform. Finally, we have our engineering prototypes which put address every step - from the industrial design to manufacturing contraints.AIRE HARDWARE AND SENSOR SPECS
- Main Processor — Nvidia Tegra X1 (1 TFLOP/s) with powerful Nvidia Maxwell™ architecture, 256 GPU cores, multi-core 64-bit CPUs, unbeatable 4K video capabilities, and more power-efficient performance.
- Flight Controller — ARM Cortex-M4 with DSP
- GPU — NVIDIA Maxwell 256-core GPU DX-12, OpenGL 4.5, NVIDIA CUDA®, OpenGL ES 3.1, AEP and Vulkan
- CPU — 4 CPU-cores, 64-bit ARM® CPU 4x A57 2MB L2 Video — H.265, VP9 4K 60 fps Video 4k H.265, 4k VP9, 4k H.264
- Battery — 6s, 14.8V
- Flight time — 8 minutes (typical) Speed — 1-2 meter per second
- Charge time — 30 minutes from empty
- Connectivity — 802.11ac WiFi, Bluetooth
- Main Camera Sensor — 1080P, 70-degree FOV
- IMU Sensors — (2) accelerometers, (2) gyrometers, (2) magnetometers
- Localization Sensors — (3) cameras and (6) sonar
- Obstacle Avoidance Sensors — (1) 3D depth camera and (6) sonar sensors
Specifications may vary as we continue to make improvements. Aire is not tested for use in all countries, and customer support will be in US English. If you choose to use Aire outside the US, you do so on your own initiative, and you are solely responsible for complying with applicable local laws in your country for the import and use of Aire. To the extent permissible by law, Aevena accepts no responsibility or liability for any damage or loss caused by the use of Aevena products.
Designing a new product category was a complex and expensive process taking 2.5 years and $3,000,000+ of seed funds to develop.
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At Aevena Robotics, we believe a major inflection point in thduce robotics industry is taking place.
The Aevena Robotics team working at their contract manufacturer. For the first time ever, the availability of powerful mobile processors, advanced sensor technology, computer vision and machine learning will enable a new age of low-cost fully autonomous personal robots with never seen before capabilities.
Previously co-founder/CEO of Kontagent (VC-backed). PhD dropout in EE at UCLA where he did research on drones, robotics and embedded systems. LinkedIn
Developed micro-satellites, avionics, robots and guidance systems. PhD|Aeronautics and Astronautics @ MIT specializing in control systems. LinkedIn
A researcher from the famed UPenn GRASP Robotics group. BS|Mech at SJTU, MS|Robotics at UPenn. LinkedIn
Known expert in the field of rotor aeroacoustics with over 20+ yrs of experience. Specialized in aeroacoustics at Bell Helicopter. LinkedInAevena is supported by an extended team of talent from around the world to develop and deliver Aire.Actuated Labs Inc.
Hardware and embedded systems research and development.
Formerly VP of Ops at Kontagent. Engineer @ NVIDIA, BlackBerry, Canadian Space Agency and Bell. BS|SysEng at UWaterloo. MEng at UToronto. LinkedIn
Experienced hardware design engineer for consumer and industrial products at Logitech, Flextronics, Tyco and Microchip. LinkedIn
True full-stack developer. Experience from assembly for multiple architectures, to big data systems, to web frontends. CS at UWindsor. LinkedIn
Quality assurance and automated testing for software, hardware and robotics systems. BAS/MEng|EE at UWindsor. LinkedInEkumen Labs
Specialist in drone control systems, flight simulation, systems design and robotics. MS|EE Candidate at UBuenos Aires. LinkedInEgg Roll Studios
10+ years of experience developing UI/UX for mobile and web applications and gaming. LinkedInBrent Kilbasco: VR DeveloperTyler Matchett: VR DeveloperPierre Chamberlain: UI/UX Tools EngineerClyde Blakely: 3D ArtistAire Board Members
Ash Munshi: A seasoned Silicon Valley executive at a number of industry giants such as Oracle, SGI, Applied Materials, MSC Software and Yahoo where he was the CTO. LinkedInAntonio Rodriguez: Entrepreneur turned VC. Former CTO of HP consumer imaging and printing division. A lead investor in Oculus VR and MakerBot. LinkedInAire Board of Advisors
- Bharat Vasan: A consumer hardware veteran, Bharat is currently the President and COO of August the smart lock company. Formerly co-founder and COO of Basis (acquired by Intel). LinkedIn
- Mark Yim: Engineering professor at UPenn. Part of the famous GRASP Robotics group and head of the Modlab Research group. LinkedIn
- Sanjeet Ahira: Product and Industrial designer and architect. Sanjeet held positions at world-renowned architecture firms, Autodesk, and Google focused on robotics. LinkedIn
- Curt Bererton: Roboticist and successful entrepreneur, sold last company to Electronic Arts. PhD|Robotics at CMU. LinkedIn
- Dan Feldman: An assistant professor at U of Haifa and a senior researcher at MIT specializing in adapting big data and computer vision. LinkedIn
Aire Partners
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