EWON Robot Emotes with Google Assistant

This robotic head responds audibly to commands and expresses itself with actuated ears and on-screen eyes.

Jeremy Cook
4 years agoRobotics

After binge watching quite a bit of Netflix — in particular Black Mirror — creator Sharath Naik was inspired by the “Ashley O” home robot character to build his own take on such a device. What he came up with responds to voice commands through the Google Assistant SDK. It’s able to reply audibly and convey it’s emotions visually via movements and its eye display.

The robot, named EWON, has plenty of personality thanks in a large part to its wildly-actuated ear assemblies. Each one uses a pair of SG90 micro servos, enabling them to rotate back and forth, as well as in and out independently. The neck can also move with two standard-sized servos, and its touchscreen visor shows animated eyes that can be angry, wink, look sad, and a variety of other emotions.

EWON runs on a Raspberry Pi with a program called Snowboy used for greater control than the Google Assistant SDK normally allows. Importantly, this includes waking it with “EWON” instead of “Hey Google.” 18 unique parts form the head assembly and servo control is handled by a PCA9685 driver board. It looks like a fun project, and future updates are planned for facial detection, extra sound effects, and even the ability to move about as needed.

Jeremy Cook
Engineer, maker of random contraptions, love learning about tech. Write for various publications, including Hackster!
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