Some might have noticed my sincere passion for the WowWee robots design. Indeed, initially manufactured to be toys, the Robosapien lineup is both sturdy and neatly designed. And speaking of design – Femisapien is the top of the list.
It all started with me obtaining the Femisapien bot just for the collection – and the plans never went further than the idea of rigging the bot with the Raspberry Pi Zero that would control the bot via an IR channel – cheap and dirty hack performed on most RS robots now.
However, after playing with stock robot for a while, I understood that:
- Femisapien, unlike RS mainstream robots, barely offers enough internal space to house a Pi Zero
- Though neatly designed, it still lacks character (girl without the eyes? are you kidding?)
- Some functions actually do not work as well as described in ads and on forums
- IR commands are different from the main RS lineup, and studying through another protocol for a single robot is not an option
- Movement capabilities of a bot are enough for a bot, but walking half a meter without loosing direction is something a Femisapien is not able to cope with.
At the same time, I needed a test mule for a couple of my other projects, so I decided to mod the hell out of RS Femisapien and a bit later decide on improving its mobility.
Here’s the first attempt to resolve the “eyes issue”. I have been toying around with an idea of the robot with some mood swings for a while, so the whole Arduino was dispatched control the face, lighting and the vocals of the Lonlab Femisapien.
The mood program does not affect the performance of the bot, but definitely adds character to the robot, that is going to be controlling other robots in my lab in future – so almost no manipulators of her own and tons of connectivity to assist and coordinate other robots.
As of now, the Adafruit-driven OLED screen is mounted behind the clear visor and I’m working on permanently rigging the controller to a RPi Zero and extending the library of animations for this small screen.
So I’ll keep you posted on this, stay tuned.