offline companion robot for my disabled husband (8GB RAM constraints) – looking for optimization advice

Hi everyone. I’m probably posting slightly outside the usual scope here, but I’m hoping some of you might have advice. I’m Gen-X with no formal programming background, but I’ve been building a small AI companion project for my husband. He’s mostly quadriplegic (paralyzed legs and limited use of his hands) and spends most of the day alone at home while I’m at work. We live in a very rural area with no close neighbors or nearby friends, and the isolation has been hard on him. So I decided to try building him a companion robot. For the past year I’ve been scavenging parts and learning as I go.