About Valera and social robots

Valera is a social robot aimed to be the cheapest one able to communicate with people and emotionally react to them. Valera can act as a friend or a teacher.

Note

The Valera 0.2 release offers significant improvements over its predecessor. With 8GB of RAM (compared to 4GB in version 0.1) and 256GB of permanent storage (up from 16GB or 32GB), it provides enhanced performance and capacity. Additionally, Valera 0.2 introduces new software features, including AI models, ROS2, and devcontainer integration. While we’re in the process of updating the documentation, please note that most of the existing documentation for version 0.1 can still be applied to the current version, although it may not cover all the new possibilities.

What are social robots

Social robots can keep human knowledge and culture the same way as do books, photos, movies, stories and so on. Even if there only one person left in the world holding some rare culture, social robots can learn this culture and spread it. They cannot replace real persons, but they can be made in big quantities, they never forget, never are too busy, too old or sick.

Social robots can listen, understand feelings, react. They can teach and they can be tought.

This is how we see social robots.

What (or who) is Valera

Valera is extremely easy and cheap to build and customize. We provide all the documentation for both the robot hardware and software free of charge.

Valera born to be a social robot, but currently he is not ready to function as one, he is a work in process and at the current stage we use Valera as an example to describe how to build cost effective robots with AI and modern software on board easily.

Technologies and components used

• Single-board computer like Raspberry PI or Odroid as a braind with AI, camera and sound sensors

• 3d-printing with regular PLA

• Cost-effective servo motors and electronics

Get the files

The files - 3d source, STL files for 3d-printing and code for the robot is available on Github . Electronics components can be bought anywere, please see Supplies.

License

Valera (both software and hardware) is licensed under the MIT license. This means that you are free to modify, distribute and republish the source code on the condition that the copyright notices are left intact. You are also free to incorporate Valera into any Commercial or closed source application.