DEVLOG #2 

What I did

I created a rough 3d Model of OTIS’s body. I did so in Fusion360, and also used dimensions of servos and a sample LCD screen to model those parts as well. The servos are going to be MG90S continuous servos, and the LCD is most likely going to be a 2.4-inch LCD. I had some trouble when trying to decide how I was going to run the AI. But i decided that I will use an ESP-32 and run the AI on my PC. I also decided that instead of using YOLO or OpenCV, I will probably just use an LLM. This is because I want the robot to be able to answer more abstract questions about what it sees, and I don’t know how YOLO works with LLMs since it is designed to recognize a collection of specific items, but I will do research. I also updated my plan for what I am going to do. Also, I decided to go for a Seeed Studio ESP-32S3 with the camera module instead of the ESP-32S3 cam because its smaller and has a built in mic, which will not only make the robot more compact, but will also save me some pins.

Challenges

One of the biggest challenges I had was trying to find the right parts. This is the first time I had every done research to find parts for my own personal project, so it was very time consuming and tedious.

Finding the right board

One concern I had was whether I would even be able to use the ESP 32 for this project. While doing research, I knew that I would use SPI for the LCD, but I also assumed the camera module would use SPI as well. So, I was worried about whether I would be able to use both modules at the same time, especially since there was only one set of SPI pins on the board. This would have been possible regardless, but it didn’t matter because the camera module ended up not actually needing the SPI pins, so I think I am ok.

Finding Dimensions

Another big challenge I faced was while I was modeling the robot. I had never modeled something from scratch before, so I was really lost at the beginning. But I decided to just start somewhere and model a servo. I pulled up a random photo of the dimensions of the MG90S (I was fairly confident that the dimensions would be pretty accurate since its a popular model) and began modeling. Then I modeled the robot’s size based off of the Servos and then chose the size of the LCD by modeling it and seeing how it fit.

What is next

I will do more research on LLMs and whether this is the right option for my project, as well as the ways I can use them in my project. I will also update and create more designs and work on making a README.md file for GitHub.