In 2019, while at the Star Wars Celebration in Chicago, I stumbled upon the droid builder's exhibit by accident. I was so awed by all the droids and how well made they were. Some of them were even mobile, which at the time I had never seen. After walking through the exhibit and geeking out over all the cute droids, I found an information booth. It turned out that this club shared their knowledge about how to build the different types of droids in an acessible and understandable way. It was that day, at that booth, that I realized a novice roboticist like me could build a star wars droid.
I was most impressed with the BB-8 that I saw rolling around and felt immediately inspired. I just had to make a rolling droid, but if I was honest with myself, I am more partial to the darkside in the Star Wars universe. Thankfully for me, TLJ had introduced BB-8's evil cousin BB-9E, and the club had information on building this darker BB unit.
While roaming around the droid builder's exhibit I had seen multiple BB-8's, R2's, and MSE droids. Most of them were true to what was seen in the movie, but others were customized. The builders made original versions of the well know droids by mixing up the color schemes or adding unique features. Knowing that this was allowed sparked my inspiration even more.
After letting my imagination run crazy I had an idea. General Hux is my favorite character from the Star Wars sequel films. I spent a great deal of my time at the convention buying all the Hux merch I could and getting pictures with the Hux cosplayers. I would build a custom BB unit for Hux! Perhaps the BB-9E from TLJ was rewarded for discovering the resistance on the ship and was given upgrades to be Hux's personal droid. Or maybe Hux used his engineering skills to build himself a droid for companionship or to help him with his work. Either way, the idea of BB-9HX was born.