This is my emotional robot, BubbleBoy. Briefly, BubbleBoy was created to demonstrate emotions and their applications in robotics. BubbleBoy has a food and water level, and when averaged out, a health level. The mood is determined by the health level. There are 10 moods, each of which BubbleBoy has a little ‘action set’ with. This is to try to get more food! After the ‘action set’ is over, you can feed it or give it water. When the food/water button is pressed, it increases the food/water level by a random int in between a lower bound and upper bound. Also, when BubbleBoy finishes three ‘action sets’, it becomes more hungry and thirsty - thereby decreasing the food/water levels. So, BubbleBoy is similar to a ‘tamigotchi’. It was fun to make- BB has 2 servos, 2 DC motors, 2 buttons, 4 LEDs, 1 LDR, and 1 LCD. All of these are controlled by the Arduino board.
Here are pictures of the food and water buttons:
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Here's the LCD that displays the Mood, Health, Food level and Water level:
Here's a picture of BubbleBoy's Hula Ring! This can actually jiggle around
The source is open, so you can download it here. :)
Here's the circuit diagram:
If you want to see more pictures of BubbleBoy, check out my site :D
I think your thoughts are cool - there is not a lot of thinking emotions into homemade robots!
I also think that "emotions" should be 2 things; A) Some levels in the code, and that seams to be done quite well on your project. B) Some way of showing the emotions… and that is quite hard for me to tell on the video; What I mostly see is a spinning hat! And from what evolution has put into me to read (such as a smile, facial expressions, hair raising, arms, body movements etc) I have a hard time reading the emotions on a spinning hat!
I think you want to look at moving the eyes, or add some other "emotional expressions" that every kid will look at and say "Hey now it is happy / sad / surprised"
Perhaps have a look at things like these for inspiration:
BubbleBoy doesn’t really need a mouth or eyebrows as it expresses its emotions in its action set. So, the ‘hypertastic’ mood has an action set that includes servos moving really quickly- simulating a ‘twitching’ action (which often happens if you are hyper as you probably had too much sugar haha). It also spins its hat and vibrates the hularing When it approaches ‘dead’, it becomes slower and rather uninteresting, a simple bob here and there.
Heh, cool! Looks like Keepons flashier dressed sibling. At least they both appear to be musically inclined Pretty fun project, hope you have even more coming.
Nice project although the name reminds me of that sick kid in the movie “The Cider House Rules” that had some lung issues - I think they called him bubble boy as well :-).
Anyway I agree with Frits on that BubbleBoy doesn’t show any obvious signs of emotion - you know the ones we as humans normally look for. I realise that you have defined his emotions as being happy when the hat is spinning and all that but you if you put BubbleBoy in front of anyone who doesn’t know your definition of mood then they will probably have a hard time understanding his emotions whereas a smiling mouth would be instantly recognised. Those dead eyes don’t do him any good either. I think it would help a lot if they could “look around” - or maybe even blink.
Great idea, great color. Just out of curiosity, is this part of the EPGY study?
I like the effort you’ve put into trying to show emotions without trying to copy human behavior. Is this a finished project? Is it the first in a series? When does the blue version arrive?
Ha, contrary to what you said… everyone I have shown it to has recognized when it’s happy or when it’s sad. You can’t see it as well in the videos I took.
I don’t understand how you consider googly eyes ‘dead’ … but whatever.
As seen in the title, this is a finished ‘version 1’. The second version will have expectations.I’m not sure if I’ll be making more BubbleBoys… maybe if people are interested- but I’d like to keep continuing on different projects
Other members have already Other members have already appreciated the originality (does that word exist) of your robot so i’ll ask you a techy question (i’m quite noob actually). What is the diode that connects the emitter to the collector for?
If I saw a guy twitching around like your BubbleBoy does I would think that he was either on a serious trip or was having a seizure. I would never deduce that he was happy :-). But if your friends perceive it correctly then maybe it’s just because it doesn’t come across so well in the video like you said.
From the videos I can’t see the eyes moving or anything… they seem to be inanimate, lifeless, dead or whatever you would call it. They still look cute though :-). Do the eyes move?
As placed, it can’t help. That’s what jka was saying up there, the snubber / protection / flyback diode is not doing what it’s intended for, since it isn’t connected across the load. It only functions to supress the transient high voltages if it can form a circuit around the inducutive load (the motor) to drain off the excess voltage generated when the transistor is shut off. For protection, the diode should be connected with the cathode towards the positive voltage side of the motor, and the anode towards the ground, transistor side of the motor. (Basically the same as you have it, except across the motor rather than the transistor).
Exactly. Sorry for not clarifying in my original post. When you stop the motor and the magnetic field collapses, it can/will generate a high voltage spark that can destroy the transistor. To prevent this, you mount a clamping diode as robologist described.
This applies everywhere you use a coil. That is, for example, motors, solenoids and relays
i dont meen to be mean but i think i seen this on tv or something. they made something like this to teach children to make direct eye contact. what i meen is it had sencers in its face if it dosnt detect that anyone is looking at it it will dance and move around. it was made to teach childer to keep eye contact when there parents were talking to them or something like that. but im just saying it looks like what i seen it dosnt meen yours does they same as it.
but it does look cool the one i seen was jsut plain and yellow (i think it was yellow) but you added things that ar eye catching.
And cool how much work you have put into all the finalizing, really inspiring, thanks for sharing!
When it approaches ‘dead’, it becomes slower and rather uninteresting, a simple bob here and there. 