Chatty C-3PO (Threepio) Explores Human-AI Relations

AI chatbots are a dime a dozen, sometimes cheaper. Chatbots in custom hardware are less numerous, but still pop up steadily. So if you want a conversational robot to stand out, it helps to go the extra mile. Something like a realistic layer of personality, a shiny gold coat, and six-million forms of communication would help a lot.

Sam Potozkin’s Threepio project pulls it off. Inspired (of course) by the original 1977 film, Potozkin, a student at Chapman University, has tried to replicate the experience of interacting with the iconic protocol droid as faithfully as possible. He put in the work to give the 3D-printed case a smooth finish, and added little greeblies to the display stand to sell it.

But the work didn’t stop there. His C-3PO runs the AI chat stack locally on a Raspberry Pi 5. Instead of a typical speaker, he uses an exciter to make the voice sound like it’s coming from the whole head, and put time into refining effects until the sound came out just right.

This isn’t just a chatbot for the sake of it. Potozkin wrote a paper exploring human-AI interaction, and why people react differently to modern AI than to a 50-year-old android. Fully emulating that familiarity drove the realistic details of his build. As he puts it:

This project explores the translation of a fictional character into a real-world, embodied AI system. Developing this system required translating and combining abstract concepts from both AI and communication theory into a functional, working architecture.

The goal of the project was to explore what happens when conversational AI moves off the screen and into a physical, interactive system. Rather than treating AI as something purely digital, this build focuses on embodiment, giving the system a presence, voice, and personality that can be experienced in the real world.

From learning to solder, honing the audio effects, sanding layer lines, dealing with orange peel (and a dropped head at one point), it was a tremendously ambitions endeavor, and Potozkin pulled it off. And it’s made to be customized and extended, so others can put their spin on it, or add in the other 5,999,999 languages.

This chatty head isn’t the first Star Wars-inspired droid we’ve featured, and I’m certain it won’t be the last. But it’s absolutely impressive. Experienced R2-D2 builders advise beginners to start with the dome, and we can see why. If you’re going to spend a ton of time building a robot, it may as well communicate.