Make: Volume 91

DigiKey

I

magine a fully autonomous robotic companion,

like Baymax from Disney’s Big Hero 6 — a

friendly, huggable mechanical being that can

walk, hold lifelike interactive conversations,

and, when necessary, fight crime. Thanks to the

advent of large language models (LLMs), we’re

closer to this science fiction dream becoming a

reality — at least for lifelike conversations.

In this guide I’ll introduce Digit, a companion

bot I helped create with Jorvon Moss (@odd_jayy).

It uses a small LLM running locally on an

embedded computer to hold real conversations,

without the need for an internet connection.

I’ll also show you how to run a similar