RobotGPT - An Animatronic Multilingual Robot

Quick demo of the robot speaking and movement of the eyes, eye lids, and neck. There are some latency issues that need to be resolved as the audio is not in sync with the display output (sin wave).

I had the chance to demonstrate RobotGPT at the Taipei Makerfaire. The robot exhibit was pretty popular and a lot of Taiwanese folk has fun interacting with it. In particular, elders found it to be an accessible way to play with AI tools for the first time.

Here is the dual axis eye mechanism for the animatronic robot.

I went through the process of creating the lens for the eye. Even after extensive sanding of the eyes, I was not happy with the surface finish. For future iterations, I will need to print the mold positive with a finer layer resolution. Tbh, it kind of looks like the eyes have cataracts.

Current eye mechanism for robot. Some issues with the eyes shaking during movement. Need to add a dampener somehow.

Main Goal

• Conceptualization and design work for this project. By end of week, I want a deliverable of a detailed CAD mockup and ready to print mechanism for eyes.

Schedule

• Wednesday
  • Project organization
• Thursday
  • Work on CAD mockup
• Friday
  • Work on CAD mockup

Actual

• Wednesday
  • Made project plan and schedule
  • Ordered components for project
• Thursday
• Friday

End of Week Reflection on Actual Progress

[To Be Written]

I am in Taiwan until November 30. Ideally, I want to present this project at MakerFaire Taiwan on November 18th. Also I am going to Saudi Arabia from October 30th - November 5th. Oh and I also want to finish my BabelFish glasses at some point. Essentially, I have no time to get this project done. But unreasonable schedules are my forte!!

Below I have outlined a rough timetable of how I want to complete this project:

Schedule

• October 16th - October 20th
  • Conceptual design work 
• October 23rd - October 27th
  • Make eye mechanism
  • Make mouth interface
  • Film short reel of animatronic robot saying ni-hao
• November 6th - November 10th
  • Make arm lift mechanism
• November 13th - November 17th
  • Embed chatGPT with animatronic robot

Milestones

• October 27th
  • Have eye mechanism finished
• November 10th
  • Have all mechanical aspects of robot finished
• November 15th
  • Have robot finished

A few months ago, I saw this well edited YouTube video: 

The robot in this video is simply a work of art! I want to build a similar robot geared specifically for translation purposes. Instead of always asking my Taiwanese friends to translate for me, I can refer to this robot!

The centerpiece of this robot is definitely the eye mechanism. They were expertly designed as an open-source project by Will Cogley.  In terms of the mouth, I defintely want something that is visually embedded with the robot acoustics but I do not want to plagarize this project entirely. Considering that this is supposed to be a translator bot, I should probably add a section where viewers can read the robot's speech in both english and chinese.