Super Nova makes PiSloth robot even smarter

PiSloth, by SunFounder, is a Raspberry Pi-powered bionic robot kit that can talk, dance, and express emotions. One maker I met at CamJam, Cambridge Raspberry Jam, has taken PiSloth further, giving it AI speech recognition so you can talk to it. Her particular PiSloth is named Nova.

Nova gazing at its shadow at Cam Jam

The off-the-shelf PiSloth kit includes the controller board that sits on top of your Raspberry Pi and controls the servo motors to move the robot’s four joints. It can be programmed in Python or via Ezblock, SunFounder’ user-friendly GUI which looks a lot like Scratch. At just 14cm tall, this adorable machine has many inbuilt capabilities, including 22 different actions that express emotion, remote-controlled movement, and the ability to avoid obstacles.

Sloth, rabbit or frog?

By now you might be thinking the same thing I did: this it looks nothing like a sloth. It looks more like a rabbit or a frog to me. (Agreed, but who are we to question others’ weird and wonderful naming conventions? — Ed.)

I found this heartwarming image of a sloth/rabbit cuddle here but no one seems to have depicted the pair hanging out with a frog, alas

Nova makes PiSloth even smarter

Anyway, I was lucky enough to see the distinctive PiSloth named Nova in action at CamJam back in March, when we celebrated twelve years of Raspberry Pi on our third birthday. It was a wonderful event, with loads of completely ingenious Raspberry Pi projects built by local people and several who had travelled from further afield. These included warring robots fighting with balloons and pins, a hexapod robot scuttling around like a spider, and a Scratch-controlled circuit you could interact with by tapping a banana.

I also met Nova’s creator; she had seen SunFounder’s PiSloth kit and wanted to take the project further. She believes she’s the first person to use AI speech recognition on a PiSloth, and the results are awesome. She named Nova after the Nova AI platform, which is what gives it extra smarts. Nova-the-platform mostly uses ChatGPT to understand questions and create responses, but it can also transcribe speech it picks up.

Enhanced skill set

The maker used her phone to get Nova-the-robot going, using TeamViewer to connect to the Raspberry Pi inside the robot. To control it, she edits a Python file via the command line (“because I haven’t found a better way”).

The Nova-enhanced PiSloth is capable of:

• Conversation on a wide range of topics
• Opinions (has been known to discuss climate change)
• Jokes, with a degree of humour
• Playing music (while simultaneously dancing, a skill I do not possess)
• Graceful ballet
• Crazy Frog (a visual gag that you have to see to understand and fully appreciate)

Nova was the most memorable thing I saw at CamJam — not for looking more like a frog or a rabbit than a sloth, but for proving to me that robots don’t have to be extremely complicated to be able to do cool things. Kits like PiSloth are a low-hassle way for beginners to get going, and as Nova shows, there are plenty of ways to extend them once you’ve found your feet.

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