Ramin Assadollahi's Raspberry Pi-Powered Omnibot 5402 Boasts Computer Vision and Hugging Arms
This ongoing project offers a 1980s toy robot a whole new life, thanks to a series of impressively modern upgrades.
Maker Ramin Assadollahi has given a classic 1980s kid's toy, the Omnibot 5402, a major upgrade, thanks to a Raspberry Pi driving a camera-based computer vision system.
Released in 1984 by Tomy, the Omnibot 5402 was a cutting-edge home robot boasting on-board microcomputer, remote control capabilities, and a cassette tape deck capable of playing back music as well as loading saved programs. By modern standards, of course, its internals are somewhat limited — which is where Assadollahi's project to upgrade one comes in.
"When i was a child, I was dreaming of the Omnibot 5402, I loved its size, its ability to be radio controlled, it could speak and it could record movements on a built-in tape recorder and it could carry things," Assadollahi explains. "A perfect companion! Two years ago, I was lucky to get not only one, but two Omnibots on Ebay for $99.
"I wanted to have a Raspberry Pi controlling it, a decent Bluetooth remote control with more options, the arms moving, a camera for computer vision, USB sound card with a loud speaker and a microphone, LED matrix eyes for emotional expressions and to indicate where the robot’s looking at."
The first step in the project was to wire a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ to the Omnibot's built-in motorised gearbox, using an Adafruit Motor HAT. "In that way, it was easy to use their examples to control the motors using Python," Assadollahi writes. "Next I’d build this into the base, add LiPo power to the motor controller and USB battery power to the Pi. Finally, I’d add some code to connect my 8bitdo sf30 Pro Gamepad via Bluetooth to it."
Next came adding servo motors to make the arms move with two degrees of freedom, giving the robot the ability to hug, and then to create the expressive eyes. "I also wanted to get computer vision to Omnibot," says Assadollahi, "so that it could see things or people and potentially speak to them, grab them or move towards them."
The two original lamps were replaced with a pair of 8x8 LED matrices, housed in a 3D-printed adapter, while a Raspberry Pi HQ Camera Module was added alongside a fish-eye wide-angle lens. In the project's latest update, the system is shown working — but, Assadollahi admits, there's still work to be done in bringing everything together on the software front.
All the project write-ups are available on Assadollahi's website.