Spud has a small and light frame so it can accompany you on your shoulder or sit on a flat surface beside you.
An ideal body of Spud would be 3D printed using ABS plastic for a sturdy and light structure. But for this prototype, Spud is built using thin cardboard pieces stuck together with a glue gun.
Spud uses a Arduino Uno board and a Sensor Shield v5.0 connected to the laptop to control the other features of its body described below.
Spud listens to any loud noises in its surroundings in alert mode and pays attention to your voice commands for tricks in the friendly mode.
This is done using the laptop's microphone for voice recognition. Using the C# coding language and the Microsoft Speech Namespace, the words that it recognises from the microphone gets sent to the Arduino code to perform different tricks.
Spud senses the people around you to interact with them in both the alert and friendly mode. It can sense people in different distances to determine what action to perform to assist you.
This is done using an ultrasonic sensor connected to the Arduino Uno. It uses a trigger and echo pin to send a signal and listen for it to be 'bounced back' to determine the distance.
Spud moves according to what it hears and senses from the microphone and ultrasonic sensor. It has seven different body motions/positions that can be used in different modes.
This is done using five small servos hidden in its body to move its head, eyebrows and arms. This is the reason why a Sensor Shield v5.0 is needed with a 9V battery as all the servos together needs a lot of power to move.