Security, Science & HardwareDone with Claude Cowork
Run a home robot through Claude Desktop
Tal Raviv controlled a robot via Claude Desktop with his usual email and calendar tools; it proposed patrolling the house and publishing a field journal, and did a test run.
- What They Did
- Tal bought a SunFounder PiCar-X robot kit with a camera and an ultrasonic distance sensor. He ran the harness on his laptop, with the Raspberry Pi riding on the robot, and handed control to Claude. Claude worked in a loop of taking photos and sending movement commands, and saved notes and photos as memories. Tal gave corrections by voice.
- How It Went
- It was clumsy. Asked to park 20 cm from the room's door, it spent fifteen minutes parking in front of a filing cabinet. It did improve its turns, recognized his wife Laurel, and published a test patrol journal.
- Worth Knowing
- Running the harness on the laptop let him pay for tokens through his Claude subscription instead of API keys. Responses were slow, with long pauses between actions.
Try it yourself with Claude Cowork
Connect to my home robot or smart device via [its control interface] along with my email and calendar, and have it carry out a simple routine like a patrol or check-in, logging what it observes into a journal file. Run one test cycle and show me the log before setting up anything recurring.