A prop maker and blogger named Genevieve Bee has created a fully animatronic, voice-activated replica of Wheatley — Portal 2‘s incompetent, yet lovable AI.
In a post on her blog, The Prop Solve, Bee details the painstaking process of designing, building, and programming her Wheatley (see above for the video demo of the final product).
Bee’s Wheatley consists primarily of insulation foam, paper mache pulp, PVC strips, and various types of adhesives. She used an Arduino kit for the robot’s lights and an Adafruit sound board for Wheatley’s different sayings.
She notes in her post that this isn’t the first animatronic Wheatley ever created, mentioning that she drew inspiration and tips from a few others who have posted about their Wheatley projects. Her finished robot is nonetheless an impressive thing to see.
Be sure to check out more photos on her blog of the finished Wheatley, as well as a walkthrough of how Bees went about creating the robot.
