Bo-Bot and Sunny-Bot at the White House
It started with a simple question: how do you make holiday decorations that capture the spirit of the maker movement? For the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Presidential Innovation Fellows program, the answer was Bo-Bot and Sunny-Bot, life-size animated robotic versions of the First Family’s Portuguese Water Dogs that would become part of the White House holiday décor. For the past several years, Bo and Sunny have been creatively included in the White House holiday decorations. Last year featured a 3D model of Bo with a wagging tail powered by a motor from a reindeer lawn decoration. But this year, the team wanted to go bigger. They wanted to create life-size, animated “dog-bots” that would respond to movement and bring the First Dogs to life in a whole new way.
Building Life-Size Robots
The project brought together Stephanie Santoso, Mark DeLoura, and Laura Gerhardt from OSTP, along with Bosco So and me from the Presidential Innovation Fellows program. We worked on the dog-bots in our free time over six weeks, which was plenty of time to learn firsthand how much patience, determination, and fun goes into a maker project.
The hardware foundation was built on an open-source electronics platform designed for interactive projects. Servomotors, motors coupled with sensors that provide angular position feedback, were used to animate the bot heads. These motors can rotate 180 degrees and are commonly used in robotics and animated toys. The teams programmed software to control the speed, angle, and sequence of head rotations, giving each dog its own personality through movement.
The Iteration Process
Bo-Bot went through about five different prototypes, with each design presenting new challenges. The first design enclosed the hardware and motor neatly within a box, but that quickly became a problem. The box prevented heat from escaping, causing the motor to overheat and burn out. The team switched to a custom open platform where both the motor and platform could be mounted. The platform and special attachment brackets were made from wood and laser cut at a local makerspace.
Developing a way to attach the motor to the head while providing stability and the right amount of give to prevent overheating created an additional challenge. The final answer, after all the clever attempts failed, was a metal bar and zip ties.
Sunny-Bot went through a similar number of iterations. The greatest difficulty was precisely positioning the head at specific angles. The team tried different types of motors and eventually settled on a servomotor, a motor that can move to specific angles along an arc without needing end switches or other position identification methods. But Sunny-Bot got something extra: infrared sensors in her eyes, allowing her to track movements and follow individuals across a room with her head.
Making It Open Source
We posted the source code online, along with instructions for making your own dog-bot at home, at school, or at a local makerspace. That part matters more to me than the address. The maker movement’s whole premise is that technology should be something you can understand, modify, and build yourself, and a decoration you can’t replicate would have missed the point.
The OSTP and PIF teams initially worked on Bo-Bot and Sunny-Bot separately, which resulted in slightly different implementations. During the final stages of assembly we came together to troubleshoot and make the last tweaks required to get the dogs running in time for the holiday season. Two teams, two designs, one deadline.
Integrating elements of the Maker Movement into the White House holiday décor is part of a broader effort to highlight the importance of making to American innovation. As President Obama said at the White House Maker Faire last June: “Today’s D.I.Y. is tomorrow’s made in America.”
Bo-Bot and Sunny-Bot are holiday decorations, but they’re also an argument: robotics and interactive electronics are within reach of anyone willing to burn out a motor or two and try again. Every part we used is off the shelf. Every technique is learnable in a weekend at a makerspace. And the finished work stood in one of the most photographed rooms in the country, which says more about where making stands than any policy statement could.
The project has been covered by The Washington Post, which highlighted how the White House holiday décor went digital with dog bots and crowdsourced tree lights. The White House blog documented the entire process, from initial prototypes to final assembly.
Somewhere out there, a kid is going to build her own dog-bot from our posted plans. That’s the part of this project I keep thinking about.