2022 Sci-Fi Contest: The Animatronic Baby Yoda You’ve Always Wanted

April 19, 2022 by Lewin Day 2 Comments

Simple robot parts make up the internals.

When it comes to sci-fi, it’s hard to go past Star Wars, and many submissions to our contest land in that exact universe. [Kevin Harrington]’s entry is one such example, with his animatronic Baby Yoda that’s exactly as cute as you’d hope it would be.

The build is based on a Pololu Romi chassis, a simple two-wheeled differential-drive robot platform. It’s paired with a robot arm in the form of Hephaestus Arm 2, which provides the articulation for the precocious little creature. An ESP32 microcontroller serves as the brains of the operation, controlling all the servos and motors that make baby Yoda move. Control is via WiFi, using a website hosted on the ESP32 via RBE1001lib.

The animatronic baby Yoda would surely be a hit sitting on one’s shoulder at any sci-fi convention. Overall, it’s a simple robot that becomes more personable by skinning it with an adorable toy. It’s not the first baby Yoda (or Grogu) that we’ve seen, either – the popular character has inspired builds before, too! Video after the break.

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Baby Yoda Becomes Personable Robot

January 12, 2021 by Lewin Day 6 Comments

Baby Yoda has been a hit character in Disney’s The Mandalorian, but does not actually exist in real life as far as we know. Instead, [Manuel Ahumada] set about building a robotic replica, complete with artificial intelligence. (Video, embedded below.)

The first step was to build a basic robotic simulcra of Baby Yoda, which [Manuel] achieved by outfitting a toy with servos, motors and a Raspberry Pi. With everything hooked up, Baby Yoda was able to move his head and arms, and scoot around on wheels, all under the control of a Bluetooth gamepad. With that sorted, [Manuel] added brains in the form of a smartphone running Intel’s OpenBot machine learning platform. This allows Baby Yoda to track and follow people it sees on its smartphone camera, and potentially even navigate real-world spaces with future upgrades.

It’s a fun build, and we’d love to see the bot let loose at a convention to explore and make friends. We’ve covered OpenBot before, and look forward to seeing it used in more builds. Video after the break.

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