Simone is an opensource fembot (female) humanoid AI robot and is part of the #openFembot project. The purpose was to design a humanoid robot with A.I. that anyone could build. Simone phase 1 was completed in January 2022.

Uses: Simone can be used for entertainment, a store greeter, an office receptionist, a robot singer, a robot actress (“actroid”), and as a human companion.

Simone was inspired both by Gael Langevin’s InMoov and Sophia humanoid robots. Thomas saw that Hanson Robotics’ Sophia was selling for nearly $90,000 and wanted to prove to himself that he could build a similar robot for under $5000. As presented Simone can be built for about $2000 and is more intelligent than Sophia.

Details:

Simone’s AI: Microsoft Cognitive Services for Object/scene identification, facial emotion detection, speech emotion detection, face recognition and identification. Simone also uses a GPT-3 chatbot, AIML chatbot, and a Bing service for speech recognition. She also uses Sitehound and YOLO Darknet computer vision.

Simone’s robot body: off the shelf parts, steel, plastic, rubber and a silicone rubber outer skin.

Simone’s animatronics: Each arm has 3 degrees of freedom. The neck has two. The head has seven. The robot moves around on a mobile base.

Simone’s sensors: Smart camera, smart microphone, as well as touch sensors

Simone’s Audio: Voice input/output

Simone’s software: Python software that integrates the servomotors, the AI software, the sensors for a human-like presentation.

Simone’s Computer and Microcontroller: Windows 10 running ARC software and EZ-Robot microcontroller to provide an interface to the electronics.