Luca Di Lorenzo (@LucaDilo on YouTube) collaborated with Arduino to create Nuvi, a small, expressive desktop companion designed to interact with you, listen, and respond to your inputs. Although the initial idea was to build a conventional robotic assistant, the project evolved into something far more dynamic and fun. Thanks to the power of the Arduino® UNO™ R4 board, Nuvi processes everything locally, meaning its core experience works entirely offline.

As a fun fact, Nuvi’s design and personality are inspired by Kaito—the adorable Shiba Inu belonging to our colleague Assunto—who has won the hearts of the entire team at the Arduino office in Turin, Italy.

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Di Lorenzo says Nuvi’s first design worked but felt like a machine. With Kaito as a reference, he was able to find the inspiration to build something we would all actually want on our desk.

Talk to it and control your smart home

Nuvi is under 30 cm tall (approximately 12 inches) and packs a surprising amount into that compact form. It is built to wake up when you approach, responds when called by name, and holds a conversation powered by Gemini – which handles both understanding speech and generating replies in a single step, with no separate speech-to-text layer. For speaking without the cloud, Nuvi uses Piper, a voice engine running entirely on the board, so responses feel immediate. It can search the web when needed, toggle smart home devices by voice or a hand gesture, and read out room temperature and humidity when you flash it an open palm.

Beyond conversation, Nuvi has animated eyes that express different moods, moving ears and arms, head pan and tilt, touch reactions on its head and belly, and — just for fun — a dance.