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Project Bif began in 1998. Although then it wasn't called Project Bif. It actually only ever acquired the name Project Bif when this website was made because it needed a name. Bif is an acronym for [ it's a secret ]. Project Bif is a project to make a robot. You may have heard of robots that do really cool stuff in the fields of science research, surgery and even exploration on other planets. But no other robot that I know of in the world is being developed for something as fundamental to humans as Bif is. Because Bif is being developed to do nothing. Doing nothing is something many humans have been doing for years but as far as I know this is the first time a robot has been developed that with the design goal of making it able to do nothing.
Actually Bif is being made so that we (the makers) can learn more about - well - everything. Since 1998 Bif and us have come a long way. Bif has gone from being a few drawings on scraps of paper to actually existing, driving and being able to navigate. But more importantly we have learnt more about electronics, programming (assembly language, C, C++, bash scripting, makefiles) and about managing a project.
Currently Bif can move about on it's two tracks it can synthesis speech (barely understandable though) by putting words and syllables together.
See the history page for some more about the history of Bif and how it is progressing. Look at the tech page for more detail about how parts of Bif work. All of the Bif source code is available under the GPL in the unlikely event of it being useful to someone else. It is viewable online.