Axon Is a 3D-Printable Humanoid Robot Backed by a Large Language Model for Better Interactivity

Maker Marcin Płomiński and pseudonymous collaborator "Minco0" have released the source code and design files for Axon, a 3D-printable humanoid robot backed by a large language model (LLM) they started developing in school.

"Axon is currently a working prototype," the pair explain of the project's status. "While it's fully functional, it's not yet fully polished and still needs some improvements and refinements to make it easier to assemble, more reliable, and more user-friendly. Just keep in mind that when we started this project, we had no CAD experience and were 16 and 17 years old."

Axon itself is a tall and thin humanoid design, gliding on hidden wheels and featuring a friendly face with glowing eyes on its rotating head and a pair of arms with five-fingered human-like hands. Inside the 3D-printed housing is a structural aluminum frame, plus a handful of parts that need to be cut from metal — something Axon's creators aim to resolve with 3D-printed equivalents in a future design.

For the electronics package, Axon features a quartet of Espressif ESP32 microcontrollers talking to a Raspberry Pi single-board computer — which, in turn, handles visual input from a camera mounted in the robot's head, controls a touchscreen display mounted in its chest, and uses a Python script to link to a large language model (LLM) running on a more powerful remote server.

"It has AI-powered speech recognition," Axon's creators explain, "so you can control it with your voice. It uses a database of questions with actions, along with a large language model, to answer other questions. [It] works like a basic chatbot, with UART actions so you can execute any command on [the] ESP32 to make it do stuff. The robot can move its arms, 'drive,' and turn his head."

"It's still a working prototype and has some questionable design choices, to say the least," Płomiński admits. "That's why I’m asking for your help to improve it. I had no prior experience with GitHub, so I’d really appreciate any constructive criticism both about the project itself and the GitHub repo. This project is not beginner friendly! You should have some knowledge about 3D printing and CAD, preferably Onshape."

The project's source code is available on GitHub under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license; CAD files are available on Onshape under the same license, with STLs available on Printables. Płomiński estimates the build cost at around $1,300.