In the second episode of our 'Designing the Anthro' series, we look at our novel modular joint design, and a potential method for driving the joints.

In this episode we take a look at the knee and elbow designs so far, and what needs to be done to fix their shortcomings. Also, we take a look at what type of stance the Anthro will have! Can you guess where we're going with this?

Also, here is a link to the F360 timing belt generator we used: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3458902

Here is the introduction to our YouTube series covering the development of the latest iteration of our robot, Anthro One.

In this update, we look into our first attempts at using brushless motors paired with 3D-printed gearboxes to create powerful backdriveable actuators. The first ones were based on the Opentorque actuator made by @Gabrael Levine . The motors are controlled using the ODrive motor controller.

In this week's update, we will take a look at our first 3D-printed modular foot design, as well as an object recognition demo. We run YOLOV2 on the Nvidia Jetson TX2 to detect different types of fruit. A side-by-side arrangement of webcams served as a stereo camera, using dual video streams to eventually be used for depth perception and increased simultaneous detections.

Stay tuned for more updates next week, where we will take a look at our first 3D-printed brushless actuator! #robotics #3DP #stereo #AI #anthro

In this video, we tested out and compared two different speech recognition systems. One of them is based on a microcontroller solution, MOVI, while the other is based on Pocketsphinx running on the Raspberry Pi.

In the following videos, we tested out two new arm actuation methods. The first uses servo motors assisted by helical 'artificial muscles', with the second using stepper motors. This was our first venture into testing robot designs powered by stepper motors.

In this update video, we demonstrated the use of faux fur as both an aesthetic and functional covering for the Anthro. We also demonstrate the compatibility of Force Sensing Resistors (FSRs) with fur to act as a simple type of "robot nerve".

"Hey everyone. I've been working tirelessly to get this video up for you guys to see what we have accomplished so far. Thanks for watching, and expect more updates often!" 

- @Fennex628 

Here are two demo videos of the servo-driven arms on the robot from 2016: