Interactive R2-D2 Mod

Now I know what you're thinking; "Aww man, the ugnaughts got R2, too?!" but let me explain.

A few years ago me and my brother were walking around Wal-Mart and stumbled across one of those Interactive R2-D2 toys. The package was absolutely destroyed, and they were selling it for $30. At that time, the price for one of these was around $250 dollars, so like poor kids who know their stuff, we bought it. So we go home and realize why it was so cheap. I'm not sure if this thing is the worst product in the world, or if it was broken (I feel like it's the latter), but it could NOT understand anything we said. Occasionally, after fifteen minutes of "Hey are-too" we could get one simple command, but nothing really serious. After that, it just sat in my room, until I saw a guy who modded the Wall-E toy to make it way more awesome. So I figured I'd give it a shot on my little astrodroid.

Basically, I got it apart, and it just sat there again, but this time in pieces. Now that I have so much extra time though I decided to bust it out and start work on it again.

Here's what he's got for guts right out of the box:

In the Body:

3x Motors (1 for each leg, plus the head)

1x Mics

1x Speaker

1x Button w/Red LED (to lock his legs so he can't move)

And the usual power switch, batteries, and main controller board

In the Head:

3x LEDs (Red/White/Blue for mood and hologram)

1x PIR Sensor

1x Ultrasonic Rangefinder

2x Mics (One on each side)

1x Piezo-Electric Sensor

As well as the daughterboard for the sensors

Right now I've taken out the main board, since it's what has had the issues, and I'm replacing it with an Arduino (that might change) plus a few H-bridges for the motors. If I can, I might try to salvage the sensors but it would probably just be easier to buy new ones, but I haven't really looked at it. I was planning on throwing an eee-701 motherboard in it, but it didn't quite fit.

I hooked up the motors and the arduino and it runs around pretty nicely, but can't do anything impressive yet.

I don't really have an idea what I want to do with it, other than use it as a test platform for AI and such, but here's a few things that I'd like to do with it:

Replace the 4x D batteries and 4x AA batteries with a nicer, smaller, more powerful NIMH battery

Give him his little uplink arm to recharge himself/plug into computer or network

Hook up servos to his beverage holder

Whatever else I can think of

If you have any ideas or feedback, please feel free to post them on my blog.

UPDATES!!!

12/11/09

I wired in all four LEDs and the button on the front. It still won't do anything amazing since it doesn't have any inputs, except that button.

2/13/10

Ordered the final parts and made a few "finishing" touches. Right now he's as done as he'll be until I can access the tools to make a more permenant completion. I plan to start programming some stuff similar to this so that he can understand and interact with the environment. I'm hoping I'll be able to implement the same code into other robotics projects, specifically ones with arms and hands so that it can actually do things, rather than just look cool. That's quite a ways off though. Here's the changes that have taken place:

Put in 4x 7.? volt NiMH batteries to replace the D batteries

Added a servo that controls an arm that connects to the batteries so they can be charged

Taped an Eee PC that will control the Arduino board (Later, I'm hoping this will end up inside of the R2's case)

Put an ultrasonic rangefinder so he can measure distance (will be useful for generating a map of the environment)

I still need to hook a camera to him so he can actually see things. Right now he can't do a whole lot, but it's fun to watch him spin around, but there's still a ton of potential, but will require a lot of hard work to see it make any real progress.

Also, I've implemented some code that allows the Eee to control him via some C++ code using CSerial. So hopefully soon he'll be doing things on his own soon.