Google unveils AI camera kit for Raspberry Pi

Google has unveiled its latest Raspberry Pi AI kit

Google has unveiled an artificial intelligence camera kit for the Raspberry Pi, allowing developers to add object and facial recognition capabilities to projects.

The AIY Vision Kit, developed by the internet search giant, is aimed at bringing the power of artificial intelligence to the Raspberry Pi mini computer.

The kit includes an Intel Movidius MA2450 circuit board, several camera modules and computer vision software that can be installed onto the mini computer.

Over the past few months, the American tech firm has shown significant interest in the Raspberry Pi. In May, it announced a voice kit.

Using it, developers can create Google Assistant-based voice recognition systems for the Raspberry Pi. It also lets work on their own natural language processing projects.

The company's second AIY Vision Kit means developers can develop AI projects easily and efficiently. For instance, the circuit board runs neural networks on the device.

And the software comes with access to several TensorFlow neural network models. The first can recognise objects; the second, human faces and expressions; and the third, animal faces.

Billy Rutledge, director of AIY Projects at Google, said: "We've also included a tool to compile models for Vision Kit, so you can train and retrain models with TensorFlow on your workstation or any cloud service.

"We also provide a Python API that gives you the ability to change the RGB button colors, adjust the piezo element sounds and access the four GPIO pins."

The kit costs $45, and is capable of learning over time. There's no doubt Google will announce new additions and features in the future.