14 DAY TRIAL // The immensely popular Doctor Who science-fiction TV series has a lot of beloved characters and one of them is the K-9, which has been present on and off on the show for the past 30 years. An IBM engineer built an amazing functional replica of the K9 robot, and it's powered by a Raspberry Pi.
We can choose to think about the Raspberry Pi as a serious mini-PC or as a learning tool for kids, but that doesn't mean that we can't also get to see the device in action in a more fun setting. Building a K-9 prop inspired by Doctor Who is not a difficult task to pull off, but building a functioning robot is a different thing altogether. It's not something that you get to see every day and it's the kind of stuff that fans of the show would only dream of seeing one day.
The fact that this K-9 unit has been built by an IBM engineer will give you an idea of how complex this project really is, although just reading about it doesn't seem like a big project. The dog can walk (sort of), has a working panel on the side displaying all kinds of cool information, can waggle its ears, and it can also talk back and understand what you are saying.
Doctor Who's Raspberry Pi-powered K-9 is impressive
Surprisingly, there have been other K-9 projects inspired by Doctor Who, according to Helen Lynn, a Raspberry Pi social media editor. She also mentions a wooden version of the robot built by William Reichard, which also comes with a printer in its head.
"A Raspberry Pi as the brains of the robot was part of the project from the very beginning. It controls K-9’s expressive, servo-driven ears and tail as well as the scooter motors that move him around, runs Node-RED to allow browser-based control and to display a power monitoring dashboard on the panel on his side, and lets him to respond to voice commands and hold a basic conversation. A Raspberry Pi camera module on a long cable sits behind his eye panel. Who wouldn’t want to share their home with a robot like this?" wrote Helen Lynn on the official blog,
There is also a LEGO K-9 case for Raspberry Pi, a Raspberry Pi-controlled Dalek, and even a small Tardis that flies high in the atmosphere. It looks like the usage possibilities of the Raspberry Pi are still expanding.
