

Ask HN: Do any open Furby-like projects exist?  - mrtrombone

I was thinking of getting a Rasberry-Pi or Arduino type board and playing with creating an open/ programmable soft toy ala Furby or Teddy Ruxpin.<p>I can't be the first person to think this.<p>Does anyone know of such a project that already exists that I can start from?<p>Cheers
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vitovito
Most of the projects in this vein are defunct, including the Tux Droid, the
original Furby, the original Teddy Ruxpin, and the Nabaztag rabbit.

I always felt the story of Felix Gallo's "Poppet" project at Data General was
interesting: <http://metatalk.metafilter.com/13606/#384503>

An original Teddy Ruxpin doll would probably have been the easiest to hack,
replacing the cassette tape with a stereo audio input and generating the
pulses necessary to animate him at your discretion:
<http://www.illiop.org/workings.html>

The Nabaztag rabbit has been resurrected a few times, it looks like you can
buy a new "Karotz" model for US$130, needing only a plush exterior:
<http://store.karotz.com/product/22/karotz>

You could stuff another sort of mechanical toy, like a RoboSapien RC robot,
into a stuffed animal: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_WJ23Zg1Rg>

There's also a new startup named ToyTalk, which seems to be doing something in
this vein: <http://www.toytalk.com/>

You might find it easier to start making something that's not quite as
complicated as an animatronic toy. Soft electronics projects and startups have
been around for years, with shirts that hug you back and pillows that light
up:

Pillow Talk: <http://www.joannamontgomery.co.uk/littleriot/?q=node/11>

Chatter Pillow: <http://sternlab.org/2006/11/chatter-pillow/>

For making one yourself, books on soft electronics might be useful.

Making Things Talk: <http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596510510.do>

Fashioning Technology: <http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596514372.do>

Instead of regular Arduinos, you can use sewable electronics specifically
designed for this, like the Lilypad, which you can get at SparkFun, in their
e-textiles category: <https://www.sparkfun.com/categories/204>

Adafruit also has their own line, just launched, called FLORA:
<http://www.adafruit.com/category/92>

There are lots of "robots lite" projects you could wrap in fuzzy fabric, too,
like this animatronic head:
[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jeffkessler/tj-an-
animat...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jeffkessler/tj-an-animatronic-
puppet)

It really just depends on how complicated you want to get with it. Depending
on your experience, it might be best to start small, working through the
projects in those books.

~~~
mrtrombone
Great links thanks.

One thing I have been wondering is what text to speech synthesis would sound
like with non 'human' voices. Most demo's are of course focussed on human
voices e.g. <http://www.cstr.ed.ac.uk/projects/festival/morevoices.html> but
it would be interesting to develop some 'creature' ones as per elmo, furby,
alvin etc

Have you heard the Karotz rabbit's voice?

~~~
vitovito
Nope. Either way, speech synthesis isn't the hard part; having natural
cadences and useful things being said is.

The less your animatronic creature does, the greater you project your own
emotions onto it, and more likely you are to find it realistic or compelling
or interesting or natural. Poor robotic speech instantly kills that empathy.
Think about R2-D2's nonsensical beeps (that express emotion tonally) versus
C3-PO's obnoxious prattling.

If you're trying to make it be "helpful" by telling you status information,
how many times have you been frustrated when someone gives you directions, or
is telling you about a problem narratively instead of in terms of reproducible
steps? Speech is very inefficient, but for empathizing, Furbish was great.

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evoxed
Well, I remember trying to get my cousins to cut open their stuffed animals so
that I could stuff my Lego Mindstorms creations inside. I'll be checking back
in this thread, definitely something I'm interested in as well.

~~~
Crake
Ha! How'd that go over with them?

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wtracy
The Tux Droid, maybe?

