Futurama Fan Turns Bender’s Head into a Custom Smart Speaker

Voice assistants are usually very polite, but a fan of Futurama decided he wanted one with a little more attitude. The result is a smart speaker that looks and behaves just like robot Bender’s head, right down to his catchphrases.

Smart Bender

Zen Kong designed and built the smart speaker and its animated voice assistant himself as he shared in a video posted on Reddit. He used a Raspberry Pi Zero W computer and input his program on the Pocketsphinx speech recognition platform. He could then teach the software to understand certain voice requests and to use Bender’s frequent sayings from the television show. Using a design from Thingiverse, Kong 3D-printed a model of Bender’s head, setting it up so that it lights up when listening or charging. The voice assistant operates offline, so it isn’t up-to-date with information, but you might be able to learn something about the year 3000. Kong posted the Python code he used on GitHub, so anyone can build their own Bender smart speaker. Check out the video below.

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