Zoltar The Fortune Telling Robot At stART on the Street
By: Ariel Amasifuén
It’s that time of year for stART on the Street! stART on the street is Worcester’s annual craft faire, bringing artists from all over the state to Central Massachusetts. Technocopia has been an organization tabling at stART for many years, hosting activities for guests to be able to participate in to make art and encourage creativity.
Technocopia members sign up as volunteer and show up throughout the day to help folks out with running our activities and answering questions for attendees. This year was extra special, as our Robotics Club and their friends came together to make a fortune telling robot built with robotics and AI, and they showed it off this year and let guests ask for their fortune throughout the day.
The Robotics Club worked on this project on and off for a number of months, which primarily focused on developing the code for Zoltar to respond to users, remember the name and face of the people they talk to, and give a variety of fortunes when they were asked questions. After they developed Zoltar’s programming, they built the robot itself, with a hand held mouth with animations to show movement, a frame to hold his torso, and painting Zoltar’s head to be in the uncanny valley, but improved from a baseline.
It was a lot of fun seeing folks building Zoltar and people interacting with him at stART on the Street! A lot of interdisciplinary artists and makers came together, and the people who engaged with Zoltar had a lot of fun and curiosity playing with him and seeing how to get weird responses from him.
Thank you to everyone who engaged with making Zoltar and those who played along with him at stART on the Street!