Poppy is your 3D printed humanoid robo buddy
Who here doesn’t fancy hanging out with a friendly humanoid robot? Wouldn’t it be great if you could build one out of 3D printed bits and parts from a high street store, kind of like Weird Science without the awkwardness? Say hello to Poppy.
Poppy is the latest in friend-printing technology. Well, I suppose the official line is ‘open-source humanoid’ but that sounds a bit… unfriendly.
Straight from the minds of design company INRIA Flowers, Project Poppy focuses on creating your very own 3D-printed, self-assembled robot friend that can (almost) walk on its own.
When I say almost, you still need to guide your bipedal buddy, Poppy, as you would a drunken friend with your hands in theirs.
Poppy’s thighs (like ours) are curved inwards for better balance and its feet flex, creating a natural heel-toe footfall, and its shoes provide useful balance data via an array of sensors.
Every bit of Poppy, from its LCD screen face and dual camera eyes to its kid-sized feet, is either printable via your standard 3D printer or purchasable via your local electronics store. So there’s really nothing stopping you from creating a whole gang of robots and programming them to do your bidding.
Better still, if Poppy 2.0 can walk on its own then why not slam down €7500, get it together and then teach it to fetch beer from the fridge and hand you the remote?
Check out Poppy in the video below.
[youtube id=”auRRxwHLyGo”]
