Coolest Project UK – April 2018

Coolest Project UK – April 2018

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The Voice O’Tronik Bot!

 On the 28th April, I showcased my latest project, which was a voice command robot, at the Coolest Projects UK.

My project was called the Voice O’ Tronik Bot.

The Coolest Projects is an annual event that encourages kids to be creative & provides an opportunity for the young Coder Dojo, Code Club & Raspberry Pi members to show off their cool projects that they’ve been working on.  There were 5 categories under which you could register your project. You had the choice between Scratch; Websites; Games & Web Games; Mobile Apps or Hardware. Members of the public were invited to come & see, interact with & talk about all of the amazing projects on display.  It is normally held in Dublin where club members from all over the world attend. This year was the first time that it had been done on a regional level in London.

My entry was a robot that responds to voice command, so it was in the hardware category. It was programmed on a Raspberry Pi 3 using Google Cloud Speech API and Python language, to carry out 4 different actions – “roll eyes”, “open mouth”, “move arms” & ” wave arms”.  I was inspired by the Google AIY Voice Kit & decided to use its voice command ability. In order to give the robot an instruction, you had to hold down a button & speak clearly into a microphone which was attached to its body.  The bot would listen to your command, & if it understood you, it would verbally confirm what you had asked it – and then physically carry out the actions. I mounted a Micro:bit on to one of the bot’s arms – it was coded so that each time the arm moved, the Micro:bit sent a radio signal to another Micro:bit which controlled a pair of servos which in turn moved the head & tail of a little animal companion (Tiny Tech).

I was very pleased that lots of people (adults & kids) visited my stand to have a go.  It was a nice feeling, seeing all their faces light up when it worked. Hopefully, other people would have been inspired to have a go at making robots with voice command & other cool stuff in the future.

 

 At around 3.00pm, there was an award ceremony, where one person from each category would receive a prize for the coolest project.  Throughout the day judges had visited each stand to talk to everyone about their projects. The judges asked loads of questions to find out how everything worked & tried them out.

The members of each category were called to the main stage, presented with a swag bag, photographed & then the winner of the category announced.  Eventually, it was time for hardware, the largest category, to join the stage. The presenter, Greg Foot, announced the winner. It was the Voice O’tronik Bot!.  Everyone on the stage started asking the person next to them – if they were the winner. Finally, the penny dropped & I realised that I had won the category with the Voice O’tronik Bot.  I felt overwhelmed but really happy that all the hard work had paid off.

A big big thank you to my mentors, including Llewelyn & my parents – & for all of the support, guidance & encouragement.

Click here to see more pictures of the event and of Voice’O’Tronik!