Collaborate Disseminate
Adafruit’s PropMaker Feather is a microcontroller board designed specifically for building props with electronic features. Thus, what better way to show it off than by building a nifty replica of …read more Continue reading Build An Easy Replica of HAL 9000
There have been many robots and AIs in science fiction over the years, from Astro Boy to Cortana, or even Virgil for fans of the long-forgotten Crash Zone. However, all these …read more Continue reading HAL 9000 Becomes a Helpful Voice Assistant
Anyone who has seen 2001: A Space Odyssey will easily remember HAL 9000, the sentient computer that turned against its human companions aboard Spacecraft Discovery One. [Ben Brooks] decided to …read more Continue reading 2022 Sci-Fi Contest: Your Home Assistant, HAL 9000
It’s like the HAL-9000, but with less homicidal mania and more interest in Rubik’s Cubes. Continue reading Astronauts Will Welcome a Free-Floating Robot Head to the ISS This Summer
It’s not as simple as man versus machine. Continue reading We Need to Tell Better Stories About Our AI Future
In the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, HAL 9000 — the neurotic computer — had a birthday in 1992 (for some reason, in the book it is 1997). In the late 1960s, that date sounded impossibly far away, but now it seems like a distant memory. The only thing is, we are only now starting to get computers with voice I/O that are practical and even they are a far cry from HAL.
[GeraldF6] built an Arduino-based clock. That’s nothing new but thanks to a MOVI board (ok, shield), this clock has voice input and output as you can …read more
They just don’t write promotional film scripts like they used to: “These men are design engineers. They are about to engage a new breed of computer, called Graphic 1, in a dialogue that will test the ingenuity of both men and machine.”
This video (embedded below) from Bell Labs in 1968 demonstrates the state of the art in “computer graphics” as the narrator calls it, with obvious quotation marks in his inflection. The movie ranges from circuit layout, to animations, to voice synthesis, hitting the high points of the technology at the time. The soundtrack, produced on their computers, naturally, …read more
Amazon put out a version of Alexa’s software that could run on Raspberry Pi. Adafruit sold a big scary red button. For, [Keith Elliott] the project ahead was an obvious conclusion.
The Raspberry Pi version of Alexa’s software was lagging behind the release version. You had to press a button to input a command, which really steals a lot of the joy out of a creepy voice controlled robot listening to you putz around the house. Now, it can wake on command.
Since this sold him on finally adding Amazon’s ever watching witch eye to his home, he decided he …read more
Continue reading Put an Honest Face On Alexa With This HAL 9000 Build
In a time when we’re inundated with talk of an impending AI apocalypse it’s nice to see an AI that’s intentionally useless. That AI is HAL 9000. No, not the conflicted HAL from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey but the World’s Biggest AI Useless Machine HAL built by [Rafael], [Mickey] and [Eyal] for GeekCon 2016 in Israel.
Standing tall, shiny and black, the box it’s housed in reminds us a bit of the monolith from the movie. But, in a watchful position near the top is HAL’s red eye. As we approach, HAL’s voice from the movie speaks to …read more
A few years ago, you could buy an IRIS 9000 Bluetooth speaker. Its claim to fame was that it looked like the “eye” from the HAL 9000 computer on 2001: A Space Oddessy. There’s something seductive about the idea of having a HAL eye answer your queries to Google Now or Siri. The problem is, it still sounds like Google or Siri, not like HAL.
[Badjer1] had the same problem so he decided to build his own eye. His goal wasn’t to interface with his smartphone’s virtual assistant, though. He settled on making it just be an extension cord …read more
