Hey gang,
I was trying to have my bot speak and move to give a more animated effect rather than have the head stay still. I was inspired by C3P0’s head movements in the Star Wars episode 5 or 6 when he said “Storm Troopers? here, oh no!” Or something similar to that.
Anyway, I thought I would do a video since I enjoy making them, and I was board any way:
You are doing amazing stuff! I sent the link to a couple friends of mine.
8-Dale
The head looks awesome. The responses you have programed into it are amazing. You might have to add some pitch control to the head in order to get the C3PO effect you are talking about. Have his head bob as a syllable (detected by placing your hand spaced a little under your chin and noting when your chin touches your hand as you speak) is spoken.
Is your whole 'bot going to have this level of realism?
If so I’d love to see a pair of my hand units on it…
That’s awesome!
How do you do the voice? Are you using some text to speech program on the PC or is this done all onboard the bot? Also, how much did it cost to have the head milled out?
Just some constructive criticism: make the movement smoother. It seems kind of jerky now, I think it might be nice if you had some sort of speedup, slow down at the beginning and end of the movement.
I love the head, one thing I’d like to see more is realistic looking robo-one type robots. Maybe one day robo-ones will get to the stage of the robot bear from A.I.
i think the jerkiness of it gives it that more robot like appearance, plus it it sped up and slowed down, i thinkit would be much harder to program
Awesome, Mike!
The video presentation is a very nice touch.
Mike’s using a SpeakJet IC.
In fact… I just sent him a PM, bugging him about just that.
(I just purchased one from www.speechchips.com)
I think Mike said it was circa $200 in some other post.
If I remember right, he had it done by a private guy, because eMachineShop kept telling him that the design was too complicated.
Sorry for the delay guys, it’s been a bussy day for me.
Thanks for all the input!
The Voice was produced using a SpeakJet chip mounted on a custom board that I made. The custom board has the same form factor as the SSC-32 and Mini-AB boards Lynxmotion sells, which makes it stackable.
The Custom board is mounted on the back of the torso.
The total cost to make my board was about $60 total about $25 for the custom fab, and about $35 for parts. Prices are ball park figures including shipping cost.
The aluminum head was done for free, believe it or not! Tom, the guy that offered to make my design, wanted something challenging to make and said he was willing to machine it for me. He made one for himself as well. I asked him how much he would charge me to have another one made, and he said $60 - $80 but was not sure of the actual price.
As for the variable speed of the servos, I have played around with this a bit and found it to be very difficult to program. I can slow down the movement, but the slower speeds seem to cause a slight “jitter” in the movement for some reason. The faster movement seem smoother and less “animatronic” looking.
Here is a picture of my custom board that I made. I have posted this before, but for those of you that have not seen it, I have provided it here:
