TOMMY-B-003 : A Portable Animatronic Robot

Ever since I was a kid, I've loved robots. Over the last year I have tried to create a robot that lives up to my childhood expectations. Based on Thomas Burns' Alexatron, and using a raspberry pi to add AI interactivity, I set out to build something that feels real with a character all its own.

This project takes heavy inspiration from this project by Thomas Burns: https://hackaday.io/project/189041-a-workbench-companion-from-an-amazon-echo-dot

My goal was to build a robot that felt similar to the Alexatron build above. However I had a few key features / design objectives in mind:

• I wanted it to look/feel like a vintage product

• I wanted it to be portable

• I wanted it to utilize a LLM for chat functionality

To make the robot portable, I wanted it to be in as compact a form as possible. This was a challenge given the size and shape of the original CRT and boards, as well as the battery and other components. The other aspect that influenced the design of the robot was the desire for it to feel like a product. I wanted it to feel commercial, like you could have bought it at a store. Something along the techno-futuristic style of Fallout. I wanted it to have a semblance of a body, and framed this around the pop-up housing taken from the original TV. The "brain" and electronics would sit on top.

• The majority of parts were 3D-printed out of PETG or PLA. All STL files below.

• The clear covers used 3 mm acrylic. DWG/DXF/SVG/PDF files below.

• Part of the enclosure utilized the pop-up housing taken from the original TV

Full build video: 

The entire CAD model is publicly available on OnShape here: https://cad.onshape.com/documents/53d643e5d1cf26bec16ee597/w/360fdf8faf7a82b20f4cd065/e/6cdc7f3cb94e4f1da9268968?renderMode=0&uiState=69a5eb7761836c4ba17489e5

Full build guide on Hackaday.io: 

https://hackaday.io/project/205139-tommy-b-003-a-portable-animatronic-robot