You can turn AT-AT toys into robots, or use an NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano board to build an AI-powered Star Wars droid. The latter is exactly what inventor Goran Vuksic from Malmö, Sweden did. He is a frequent speaker at tech conferences and brings the pit droid on stage to engage with his audience to inspire others to build something similar.
BD-1 took four months to complete and it all started by Vuksic 3D printing its body parts before assembling them. An NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano Developer Kit was then placed inside its head, enabling it to move in all directions using two motors. This board also allows for real-time processing of the camera feed, while Microsoft Azure cloud is used to process data for object-detection training. Who knows? You may even see it in a Wes Anderson-directed Star Wars movie.
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My favorite part of the project was definitely connecting it to the Jetson Orin Nano, which made it easy to run the AI and make the droid move according to what it sees. The most challenging part was traveling with the droid — there was a bit of explanation necessary when I was passing security and opened my bag which contained the robot in parts,” said Vuksic.
