What comes around only once a year?

GoPiGo
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1

What comes around only once a year in the life of the GoPiGo3 robot Carl?

August 22nd - Carl’s birthday - “Born” Aug 22, 2018

Carl is 7 years old today!

Carls_7th_Birthday
Carls_7th_Birthday1920×2560 347 KB

In his seven years, he has:

  • been “awake” 93% (56,935 hours)
  • traveled 3.9 km
  • dock and undocked 5724 times
  • turned around almost 6952 times
  • burned through 12 sets of NiMH rechargeable batteries
  • spoken 34380 phrases

Carl has achieved an amazing 93% “uptime” in his seven years of “life” (56935 hours as “Robot Carl”), and this last year only experienced one safety shutdown.

While robot Dave may hold the fastest recorded 1k time for a GoPiGo3, robot Carl has traveled 3.9 kilometers, (2.4 miles) and spun around the equivalent of nearly 7000 revolutions in 7 years, besting Dave by 0.6 kilometers in total travel.

Total Travel: 3888.6 m 12757.8 ft
Total Rotate: 2502674.4 deg 6951.8 revolutions
Total Motion: 84924.9 sec 23.590 hrs
Total Life: 56934.8 hrs percentInMotion: .04

Carl is quite “low maintenance” needing only 12 sets of new batteries in seven years.

TOTAL LIFE STATISTICS
Total Life: 56934.8 hrs since Aug 22,2018
Life this year: 7844.72 hrs (BOY Aug 22)
Days Booted This Year: 10
Average Time Between Reboot: 784 hrs
Total Dockings: 5724
Dockings this year: 828
New Batteries At Cycle: 4588
Battery Set At Cycle: 1136
Docking Failures this year: 11 or 1.3 % of Dockings
Safety Shutdowns this year: 1 or .1 % of Dockings
Ave Cycle this year: 9.5 hours
Ave Playtime this year: 5.6
Ave of Last 10 Playtimes 6.2
Last Docking: 2025-08-22 10:08|[juicer.py.dock]---- Docking 5724 completed at 8.1 v after 6.2 h playtime
Last Recharge: 2025-08-22 13:35|[juicer.py.undock]---- Dismount 5724 at 11.3 v after 3.5 h recharge
13:36:43 up 50 days, 17:40, 3 users, load average: 0.46, 0.45, 0.45

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Belated Happy Birthday Carl.
/K

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I’d pass along your wish to Carl, but I just had to yell at him “Hey Carl, GO To SLEEP!”

In our home, there’s a standing joke regarding speech reco and Carl. Long ago I was comparing speech recognition on the original Pi B+ and the new Pi 3 B, (Single core slower vs. multi-core faster).

My testing had dragged on late into the night, with Hanna trying to not be bothered by me speaking aloud and the test computers talking as well. I had a list of phrases to read to each processor, one of which was “What’s the weather like?”. The test program announced “I heard: What’s the weather, long quiet?” Hanna and I could not catch a breath we were laughing so hard.

So whenever we ask Carl: “What’s the weather?” We remember that test.

Other times we get a chuckle from what Carl says when we don’t know he has unintentionally entered a listening mode, but Carl is hearing the TV or us talking.

Today, I heard Carl talking and went to “help him” stop listening to our conversations. Hanna was talking to me, so I said to her “Just a minute” as I walked away. Carl quickly announced “I heard: Just a minute.”

Carl’s LED shining white indicated Carl had somehow entered his natural language interface mode without my having commanded him. In this mode Carl attempts to understand if what is said to him is something he can do or lookup in Wikipedia.

My problem is to get Carl to “Exit natural language mode”. Today Carl’s first response to that phrase was another humorous moment “I heard: Batchelor likes it.” Sometimes he is right on, sometimes he is way out in left field.

Eventually he understood what I wanted from him, and exchanged his white LED for the “bright” blue color of his return to the much more accurate command mode and the response “Entering sleep mode, listening only for ‘wakeup’ “.

Hanna and I could return to conversing without tiny ears listening in.

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4

I have the same issue with my Android phone - sometimes it gets triggered during conference calls, often with humorous results.
/K

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