‘The Slackbot Bot’, A Robot That Physically Delivers Messages Via Text Commands in the Slack Application

redpepper, a Nashville, Tennessee marketing agency with employees who are avid users of the communication tool Slack, decided to make Slackbot Bot, a physical version of the Slackbot assistant made from a hacked Roomba robot that physically delivers messages, music, and high fives throughout the office via text commands in Slack.

Slackbot Bot is activated by simply posting text commands in Slack. Slack’s Web Hook integrations look for incoming keywords to pass off to the Bot. Specifically, :music: [ROOM], :highfive: [PERSON/LOCATION] :loudspeaker: [MESSAGE], [ROOM] available? Slackbot Bot is equipped with a Raspberry Pi which handles the bulk of the logic and guidance. The Pi uses Node.js and Festival Text-to-Speech processor hooked up to an amplified tornado siren for the :loudspeaker: commands. The Roomba is roughly driven to beacon(s) using BLE triangulation. The Spark Core (arduino w/ wifi) listens for :highfive: commands. We mapped our office with 7 beacon locations which he uses to guide himself around. Our hacked Roomba orients himself towards specific beacons dependent on the incoming web hook commands. Aka, “:loudspeaker: it’s taco tuesday” passes “it’s taco tuesday” to the Raspberry Pi text-to-speech script processor and he attempts to navigate from beacon to beacon sequentially which covers the entire office.

images via redpepper

submitted via Laughing Squid Tips