EB-6

EB-6 (Explorer Bot 6) is my newest robot (a work in progress). My goal was to build a chat robot with A.I. that could talk with children. By making EB-6 smaller than my other robots, I hope to make her more approachable for children. (click on image for video)

 

 Industrial Design

My design for EB-6’s body was inspired in part by BD-1 from the Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order by EA. I wanted to do a unique design, with many of the design elements I have used in my other robots (such as the camera eyes), but have EB-6 look like it could fit in with Star Wars droids.

I did all the design using Sketchup (but I plan to move to another CAD program soon), and parts were printed using PLA-Pro on a Taz-6 3D printer. I’ve done several versions of the design, and still have ideas for additional changes.

AI

A major goal of this project was to explore the capabilities of emerging AI capabilities. The initial version of EB-6 uses Open AI’s Chat-GPT, but I am also experimenting with other AI’s such as Google’s Bard. I was inspired by the excellent Ellee project and have learned a lot from this example.

In addition, there is a “Command and Control” system, utilizing keyword spotting (the robot’s name), to detect specific commands to the robot. These can then trigger a variety of different behaviors. I used “Snowboy” in my prior robots, but this seems to be discontinued, so I switched to PicoVoice’s Porcupine wakeword detector.

Robot Hardware

Sensors:

• Each eye has a wide-angle camera, used for person spotting at the edge of EB-6’s vision. (Arducam IMX179 8MP USB camera with 150 degree M12 wide angle lens)
• A narrower-angle Intel RealSense camera is used for depth perception (distance to person), and for person identification.
• Cyber Acoustics CLV-2005 directional USB Microphone

Servos:

• 14 Dynamixel Servos (MX-64 and MX-28)

CPU:

Initial version used a Jetson Nano, but due to significant compute, DRAM, and compatibility issues, I switched to an Intel NUC computer, stripped from its case.

Robot Software

The core software runs on ROS, with a number of custom modules.  I will document the system software design in more detail a future update.