Dan Maloney
would the object being touched need to be conductive though?
Yeah, and it'd get pretty grubby pretty quickly
These $10 Sensor-Packed Gloves Could Give Robots a Sense of Touch
Machines are mastering vision and language, but one sense they're lagging behind on is touch. Now researchers have created a sensor-laden glove for just $10 and recorded the most comprehensive tactile dataset to date, which can be used to train machine learning algorithms to feel the world around them.
Touch is great, but having the ability to feel as if you have grabbed a hard cube by maybe restraining the give movement is SciFi I guess
You could just slide the glove right over the bionic hand !
That's what I was thinking XD
Disney did published some recent research about accurate sensing in soft systems (at least for positioning. It can be extrapolated to pressure).
I remember seeing a design once where there were some servos on the wrist with cables attached to the fingers, and they locked up to restrict the motion of the fingers
Like batman Cape kind of thing
A mechanism that restricted finger motion based on what's in the bionic hand's grip would seem akin to trying to handle objects when your hands are "asleep". No direct contact sensing, just position limited.
So we've been talking about the hand so much, I don't want to forget about your other great stuff. How's the terrifying mouth going?
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/30/this-animatronic-mouth-mimics-speech-with-servos/
This Animatronic Mouth Mimics Speech With Servos
Of the 43 muscles that comprise the human face, only a few are actually important to speaking. And yet replicating the movements of the mouth by mechanical means always seems to end up only partly convincing. Servos and linkages can only approximate the complex motions the lips, cheeks, jaw, and tongue are capable of.
Nathan thats interesting, I wonder if that technology could be used in a silicone skin?
Yeah it could. That's kinda the point. You can technically extrapolate their optimization pipeline for other sensor setups.
Thanks the mouth is going well, currently it takes a typed sentence and converts it into phonemes using a python script. I'd love to try using it with motion tracking too sometime, I've been looking into open source mouth motion tracking
the mouth is great! i finished building it last week! my goal is to hook it up to a raspberry pi, running alexa. and have a sort of animatronic alexa
what do you do with those old projects? Is it just sitting on a shelf, ready to talk at people?
Nathan Yeah that's interesting because it could potentially also be used to find the joint angles in the fingers, which would eliminate the need for a rotary sensor in all the fingers
Rob that sounds great I'd love to see it working with an alexa
Yeah at the minute my mouth is in its rabbit sat on my desk looking at me :) Often I break them down and recycle the parts though
When I was researching that article, I was amazed to see how few muscles the human face actually has. You'd figure there's be more given the number of degrees of freedom a face has, but you might actually have more servos than muscles there.
Yeah I know what you mean but the muscles can move in really interesting ways, like the lips can protrude forwards but also retract back to expose the teeth, so I'd need more servos than muscles to get the same degrees of freedom
Thank you Nathan, now I got a good project to work on
I mean rotary sensors aren't that hard to integrate. And you don't necessary need them in the fingers. The IRIM lab gets pretty good performance without them:
pneumatic muscles is definitely something I'd like to look into though, the Shadow Hand uses them too.
not anymore they dont
that crap was hell to work with
How? leaky?
oh they don't sell a pneumatic version anymore?
I guess there's also the trouble of having to lug an air compressor around with you haha
Leaky, inaccurate, a paint to maintain, etc.
So, the heart - was that for a specific reason? Like a client request? Or were you just seeing what you can do?
https://hackaday.com/2020/01/19/be-still-my-animatronic-heart/
Be Still, My Animatronic Heart
Fair warning for the squeamish: some versions of [Will Cogley]'s animatronic heart are realistic enough that you might not want to watch the video below. That'd be a shame though, because he really put a lot of effort into the build, and the results have a lot to teach about mimicking the movements of living things.
Yeah I'd always wanted to do an animatronic heart, but an artist in Romania bought one from me after I'd finished, I'm looking forward to see what he makes with it!
Do you plan on making an animatronic leg?
What got you interested in animatronics?
I actually worked on a prosthetic knee as a prototype but I don't think I'll take it any further, I feel like legs don't have the same cool factor as arms :)
Not sure really Matt, I've always been into robots but also biology and art - animatronics is like the perfect compromise of all three!
Not really, giving the boot to someone isn't as fun as giving them the finger
But also I've been super inspired by Karl Gallivan, Gustav Hoegan and others
Got to run, thank you Will, great links to follow up on. Keep up the great work!
Yea, it's a great way to combine all 3. The heart is really fantastic in a super creepy way
What was your first attempt at making an animatronic?
Well I've had the hand project in my head since I was about 17. The first "prototype" was made out of scrap and wittled wood with bike brake cables, It didn't work out so well haha
Well, we're at the top of the hour, so we'll have to let Will get back to work. I want to thanks him for stopping by and talking with us today - I really admire the build quality you manage, and your information sharing has been great too. And thanks to everyone else for turning out with such great questions and comments.
FYI, I'll post a transcript on the Chat in a few minutes, in case anyone missed anything.
Thank you @Will Cogley Great work!
Thanks for having me guys, and thanks for the chat! I've got some very interesting links to look through !
Thanks for the insight into your projects.
Thanks @Will Cogley!
And thank you @Dan Maloney for organizing the chat!
And don't forget - it's Hackaday Prize time again! We'll be talking about that next week:
https://hackaday.io/event/170038-2020-hackaday-prize-hack-chat
2020 Hackaday Prize Hack Chat
Majenta Strongheart will host the Hack Chat on Wednesday, May 27, 2020 at noon Pacific Time. Time zones got you down? Here's a handy time converter! It hardly seems possible, but the Hackaday Prize, the world's greatest hardware design contest, is once more at hand.
Thanks Will, veryninformative
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