The University Computer Club at the University of Western Australia announces uCsimby

The UWA UCC has completed their latest robotics/AI project in their 25th year by replacing the brains of a Furby with a uCsimm running the 68EZ328 port of uClinux.

This project was inspired by the MIT Media Lab's Mort and the HackFurby.com crew.

All the internal sensors were interfaced to the I2C bus of the uCsimm using a TI MSP430 Ultra Low Power Microcontroller for all sensors and the speech output. (Our preliminary design was based on the Philips PCF8591 however it was decided that speech output was a priority and clearly something this chip would not handle well.)

The Furby's IR sensor and transmitter are connected to the TI MSP430 however we are yet to implement the Furby protocol so at present uCsimby is waiting for his mate to be constructed (or for someone to implement the IR protocol of standard Furbies).

Some sounds of the uCfurby, or as we prefer to call him uCsimby, will soon be online.

We hope to have constructed a mate for uCsimby by the UCC 25th Luncheon on the 25th of July for a demonstration using the IR for discussions as we don't expect our speech recognition software to be capable of running on the uCsimm's DragonBall by this date.

Future projects:

• PalmPilot control program - We are currently considering implementing full remote control from the PalmPilot.
• uCsimby software upgrades via IR - We hope to be able to update the uCsimby software by IR, either by implementing IRDA or by implementing a specialized file transfer protocol.
• Community Software Updates - We hope to get the uCsimby community to automatically communicate GNU Privacy Guard (GPG) signed software updates.
• SETI - We hope to be able to get the planned uCsimby clan to run SETI@HOME (may require CPU emulation implementation) and communicate results via IR automatically to a head Furby who will communicate them to a PalmPilot.

More details should be here soon.