Connected OpenAI, Whisper, Raspberry Pi, sensors, and servo responses into a physical prototype for public-space interaction.
January 2024 - April 2024
What happened
Whiskers was our answer to a design prompt about a high-traffic place where almost nobody stopped to interact: make a robot cat people would actually walk up to.
A Raspberry Pi 4 handled the sensors, servo movements, and the link between Whisper speech-to-text and GPT responses. The cat could react to touch and voice instead of feeling like a chatbot placed next to some hardware.
It was an early design-thinking project, and a useful lesson in building the physical interaction and the software response as one experience.
The project that taught me so much about design thinking.
Where it got tough
Handling speech recognition in a noisy public environment.
Connecting chatbot responses to physical movement without making the interaction feel delayed.
Designing around Raspberry Pi performance and power constraints.
Making the prototype inviting enough for people to approach.
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