In the past few years, we have seen a bunch of cool chess playing robots. If you know your Arduino and Python, you can always build your own robot. RoboAvatar has shared a guide that shows you how to build your own chess robot. You are going to need a servo motor, stepper motor drivers, an Arduino UNO, and a few other components to complete this project.
The robot is not perfect but a nice project to try to learn more about robots and electronics.