A hobbyist has created a life-size, voice-interactive replica of the Star Wars character C-3PO, combining 3D printing, a Raspberry Pi 5, and AI software to process spoken commands and respond in a character-like voice.
The head was 3D-printed using a desktop printer and plastic filament, then hand-sanded, painted with primer, chrome-like paint, and a yellow-orange layer, and sealed with a clear coat.
The system runs on a Raspberry Pi 5, with a microphone for input and an audio exciter that vibrates the shell to produce sound. Software follows a voice assistant pipeline: speech-to-text, language model processing, a personality layer mimicking C-3PO's formal tone, and text-to-speech with character-appropriate voice effects.
All code and 3D files are publicly available on GitHub.
The maker, Sam Potozkin, is a researcher at Chapman University in California. According to a post on LinkedIn, the project combines physical hardware with real-time AI and draws on Communication Theory to shape system responses.