Twilio Evangelist Builds Popular Phone-Powered Rolling Robot

So here’s something you may have seen floating around on Hacker News or elsewhere, nevertheless we thought it was cool enough to share in case you’re looking for something to do with your weekend. When all is said and done, there are few of us who don’t love stories that end with robots. Especially robots controlled by phones.

Robots have in actual fact fascinated many of us since childhood, and thanks to modern innovation, those imaginations and tinkerings of yore are now increasingly becoming reality. Thankfully, in the hands of those smarter than I.

Jonathan Gottfried, Twilio’s resident developer evangelist, recently posted a tutorial on the company’s blog that shows developers how to build a basic robot that can be wirelessly powered with your phone, using Twilio, Arduino and Node.js.

To oversimplify, the robot was created around an Arduino board and runs thanks to the help of Node.js and Twilio’s VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) APIs. The robot is controlled via keyboard commands over VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), allowing users to press “2″ to get the robot moving forward, “6″ to turn, etc.

But we as well used the possibility to ask Gottfried if there were any other motivations here beyond demonstrating how easy it is to hack at the same time a phone-controlled robot or showcasing the power of Twilio’s APIs.

Powerful API for phone services to make

Twilio offers developers a powerful API for phone services to make and receive phone calls, and send and receive text messages. Their product allows programmers to more easily integrate various communication methods into their software and programs. Twilio allows developers to use their existing web development skills, existing code, existing servers, existing databases and existing karma to solve these communication problems quickly and reliably. System is based on Asterisk.