Google wants to bring smarts to cool gadgets and devices made using Raspberry Pi 3 or Intel’s Edison.
The company is chasing makers with open-source tools needed to add artificial intelligence to consumer, industrial, and retail devices made using board computers.
The plan may include machine-learning tools, which are central to AI. AI helps Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, and Microsoft’s Cortana answer questions, and also helps self-driving cars cruise the streets safely.
“We don’t have any specifics to announce right now, but we’re excited to keep sharing open-source machine learning tools with the community—stay tuned for more this year,” a Google spokesman said in an email.
Earlier this week, Google published a market research survey in an effort to get a better grip on the maker community and its priorities. In the survey, Google hinted it was bringing “smart tools” to makers.
In a blog entry , Raspberry Pi said those machine-learning tools will come later this year and will make smart devices even more powerful.
Devices could get Google AI technologies like image and speech recognition. For example, a home-brewed robot or drone may be able to better recognize objects with Google’s tools, or be able to respond to queries. Google provides APIs (application programming interfaces) so the services can be tweaked in gadgets.
