Senior Design Project: Boydroid

Let's Make Robots Beginners
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I’m a final year computer science major. For my senior design project, I’d like to create a simple voice-controlled robot using a raspberry pi. I’m calling it Boydroid (still working on the name). Just a simple robot that can do the following:

  • Move left/right when I vocally say “move left” (maybe one/two other motor related activities)

  • Respond to a small set of questions i.e “What’s your name?” or “What’s the time”

  • Show some intelligence (This is the part I’m really looking forward to)

    The truth is for someone who wants a career in robotics, I’ve always been intimidated my the internal workings of hardware. I’d consider myself a very good programmer though. I’ve been doing a lot coding in C, C++ and Python for about 6 years. So I feel I probably would enjoy the software part of this project more.

    During the course of my search for an expert opinion, I’ve found this community. So basically my question is how? What do I need to know? What parts would I need? I’m trying to gather requirements. My professors have pretty much indicated that they know nothing about it. YouTubers aren’t really helping. I really… really would more than appreciate any form guidance/input on this project of mine.

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I found this the other day and was impressed by the pragmatic approach in defining, so you want to build a robot, here’s 10 basic steps. Hope it helps.

https://community.robotshop.com/tutorials/show/how-to-make-a-robot-lesson-1-getting-started

What if you called your Robot Boyd Roid?

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Thanks, this is for the beginner who really want to make their career in the robotics. Well, one can also enhanced their skills in the artificial intelligence as giving command to the robot.

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Hi John,

My interest in this is to learn and have a better understanding. Please don’t be put off if my questions are more rudimentary, as you’ve probably more experience than myself.

I thought you meant, separate of programming the features you mentioned, you were asking what types components/overall makeup should the robot be. Some examples, a quaraped versus a biped, wheels or maybe trax or mecanum, just for starters.

With an open source base, maybe Darwin would be the right medium for your exploration into the hardware aspect, plus just a really cool and fun robot. Misty Robot maybe another but not a Robot Shop item, currently.

https://www.robotshop.com/en/robotis-darwin-mini-humanoid-robot.html

With your experience in Python, I know from my own first hand experience, a NAO Robot will do all the parameters you mention using a shell program Chroegraphe however, using what they call the NAOqi, you can work directly in Python modules too, thus allowing for far more control. The price point of them however makes em out of reach for many.

If you happen to be in Colorado near Arvada, you are invited to my place of business, JAKE’s Toy Box. I own a NAO and would love goof around with NAO while listening to your ideas as to how I might get a community going of like minded robot enthusiasts to help one another in increasing skills, and problem solving. Unlike here though, a Maker Space if you will. #makerspaceatjakes on FB, Twitter will show what I’ve been working on too.

Thanks for sharing more because, my hope again is to learn.

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Hello there @Allergic2Morons

Your project sounds fun and Boydroid is a nice name but I think you can make it a little more interesting by using a pun, from your username seems like you have some sense of humor so I’m sure you’ll come up with something haha

There are different approaches to making a voice-controlled robot, you could use a smartphone with a voice recognition app and send the collected data to the robot through Bluetooth and then use it that information to perform the tasks you need. You can find some examples of this here and here. Another approach is using a speech recognition module like this one, you can find some examples on how to do this here and here, and find more module options here.

Since you are a programmer I’m sure the intelligence part will be easy for you, but because you said you are not so experienced with the hardware you might want to check out this tutorial on “How to make a robot”. Also, I suggest checking out the tons of different robot projects the members of the community have shared in the Robots section and of course share yours as well.

I hope that information can help you out and if you have any other questions feel free to ask :grinning:

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Thanks for sharing this, much appreciated.