It Might Not Pour Your Tea, but This Creepy Quadruped Teapot Robot Will Watch You Drink It

Robots are built for a variety of tasks; some are made to retrieve items, others clean up your apartment, and quite a lot build things like the cars we drive. But, there is another, less common, category: robots that don’t really serve a purpose except to be creepy.

That’s the case with Paul-Louis Ageneau’s teapot robot called Eyepot, which was at least partially inspired by an enemy from the video game Alice: Madness Returns. Ageneau’s creation is a quadruped robot, with eight servos providing two degrees of movement on each of the four legs. On top of those legs is a Utah Teapot—which is a fun easter egg in its own right.

Control is handled with a Raspberry Pi Zero W paired with an Arduino Pro Mini 3.3V. The Pi also runs a Raspberry Pi Camera Module V2 that peeks out through an eye in the side of the teapot “head.” All of the parts were modeled in OpenSCAD and 3D printed in white PLA.

Eyepot is controlled via a Python program running on the Raspberry Pi. When the operator moves the robot, a preprogrammed cycle (like walking) is activated, and precise servo angles are sent to the Arduino by serial. The Pi is headless, but the operator can watch the Eyepot’s video feed and send commands through a web interface.