I have always wanted to build a robot like R2D2 (who hasn't right?) , so I recently purchased a used Hasbro Interactive R2D2 like this one. I did not expect it to work and I got pretty much what I expected. It powers on and responds to the "Hey R2" command but that is about it. I am going to change most of the electronics in it anyway so I wasn't too concerned.
Time to take it apart! There are already quite a few comprehensive documents and videos on how to disassemble the R2D2 online so I am not going into the details here.
R2 uses 4 AA batteries for the 2 PCB boards inside and 4 DD for running the 3 motors (2 for the legs and one for the rotating dome). The power board looks like this.
Main control board (left). After the dis-assembly (right).
Here is what I intend to do. Note that this is all in-flight, so the plans are subject to change.
Hardware:
1) Re-use the 4 AA for motor control.
2) Re-use the speaker and potentially the multiple mics
3) Re-use the LEDs for the dome
4) Add an Intel Galileo as the main brain for the robot
5) USB webcam w/ audio
6) PIR sensors/Ultra-sonic range finder
Software:
1) Yocto (Intel IOT Devkit Version)
2) Speech recognition via Google speech to text API
3) OpenCV for object recognition
4) Motion (If you have read my other posts, you know that I love using this)
