I build robots. This isn't just a hobby for me. I run a Roku channel, Science Fiction and Beer. I wanted to make videos for the channel, but I could never find anyone to act in them. And then a friend made a suggestion: "Why not MAKE your actors?" And then it was of to the races.

I bought some RC cars and tanks, and tore them apart. Those cars and tanks provided the basis for my robots' arm movements, as well as providing them a way to move around. They are all moved by remote control.

The voice circuit was a simple TIP31 transistor circuit, which made the robots' speech lights flash in sync with their speech.

I tore apart some Polaroid Bluetooth speakers, which both provided the audio portion of their speech, and made their lights blink in sync.

Finally, I used two programs, Audacity and Balabolka. Balabolka synthesized their speech from text, and Audacity transmitted that text via Bluetooth to the robots.

While technically nol robots (robots have to be run from programs run internally), they sure enough look the part on TV. Good enough.

I used whatever I could scrounge. Two of the robots' bodies are actually containers for cheese ball snacks. Yes, IU know they're rather sloppily constructed. This came about mainly from time and money restraints. And that I'm a sloppy person.

Being TV robots, they each had to have their own personality.

Bot #1 is 4-Q, my first robot. He's up for anything, and generally agreeable. He's essentially a stereo speaker box, with robot parts added. Since he's so heavy, I had to use the parts from a 12V Ferrari RC car.

Bot #2 is Bipolar Bot. He's always sad, and sounds like it. He was built by 4-Q and the Evil Twin Robot ro be their slave. He has a tank drive.

The Evil Twin Brother bot likes to rip off the other bots, and hates to do anything but play video games. The analog dial on him is from a Scientology e meter. I used tank drives from two tank RC toys, wiring then in parallel so they would work together.

My robot building page:
[scifibeer.com]

A video with all 3 robots: [scifibeer.com]