Pablo the Robot Head Is Even Smarter Than He Looks
While walking the conference floor at Embedded World 2022, we noticed Pablo at the Hema Electronic stand. Pablo is a robotic head that was not only moving in a convincing way but mimicking those who stood in front of it.
This alone seemed like quite an awesome project, but when we found out the way it was implemented we were amazed! We spoke with Brixhilda Koçi, Principal Artificial Intelligence Designer at MakarenaLabs, and one of the team behind Pablo, about what makes Pablo tick.
Pablo uses MakarenaLabs' MuseBox project to produce a neural network, which is then deployed onto an AMD (formerly Xilinx) FPGA. This becomes part of the chain taking data captured from the webcam in front of Pablo, ending in the desired movements of the head, eyes, and mouth.
It's an incredible way to achieve some quite interesting interactions, and MakarenaLabs have a write-up of what went into Pablo's design, along with tutorials and articles about working with FPGAs, neural networks, and robotics.
Ian Buckley is a writer, musician, and perpetual tinkerer. Commonly found surrounded by hobby electrical components, he's also a keen programmer and likes to build crazy-sounding instruments with microcontrollers. In addition to Electromaker, Ian writes over at MakeUseOf and has bylines at the likes of Online Tech Tips as well as Help Desk Geek.
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