BubbleBoy is my little emotional robot. It’s appearance is similar to CMU’s robot, Keepon, however mine was designed to be a pink snowman. I started this project in March of 2007 (Grade 11) and it’s still going! Originally, it was called Pinky, but BubbleBoy sounded more cute.

BubbleBoy’s main purpose is to demonstrate emotions and their application in robotics. Basically, it’s like a tamigotchi!

BubbleBoy runs off of an Arduino and has two user inputs, a food button and a water button. The food and water buttons contribute to BubbleBoy’s food and water levels. This creates BubbleBoy’s main health level, which determines its mood.

Depending on BubbleBoy’s mood, its actions will be faster, solwer or happier and sadder. Its moods range from ‘Hypertastic!’ to ‘Dead’. When BubbleBoy is ‘Hypertastic!’ its actions consists of vibrating its hula ring, spinning its hat, and ‘twitching’ its head. Since BubbleBoy is so humble, it only accepts food and water after it’s done its action set. Usually after completing three action sets, BubbleBoy becomes more hungry and thirsty, thereby dropping the level of food and water.

Future versions of BubbleBoy will have ‘expectations’. Meaning, BubbleBoy will expect to be fed at a specific time, or under specific lighting condition.

Here’s BubbleBoy’s circuit diagram:

BubbleBoy’s source code for the Arduino can be downloaded here!

Check out BubbleBoy in action in all of these videos!

So there you have it! I’ll still be experimenting on BubbleBoy, hopefully giving it more AI as the days go by.

Do you like BubbleBoy and want to see more robots created like it? Donate a few cents (or dollars) to my Robotic Fund It helps me buy parts, and research human-robotic interaction (or HCI). Click the Donate button on the right hand side bar ->

Want more? Click here to see all of my blog posts that mention BubbleBoy! And click here to see all the blog posts that mention Pinky.

BubbleBoy’s Rather Empty Trophy Cabinet

• Participation ribbon from crabfu’s Most Characterful robot contest (September 2008)