ArtBot

New video of a robot trying to push a box

I made a video showing a robot trying to push a box which is too heavy and thus try to mimic the contortion of the body in order to make it.
Although it is impossible to compete with what is done in the animation world, I still have a robot with many DOF specially in the Torso and Arms so there are many possibilities to explore. For a first test, I implemented  3 sequences:

• The first one is the robot flex its legs and keep the upper body almost straight;
• The second one the robot bents over the box;
• And in the third one, the robot is tired (and desperate) and put one hand on its head.

I am not really happy with the first sequence but the second and third sequences are quite convincing. It is really a question of rhythm and I still need to improve the software here. Also I need to add feedback on the grippers so that the robot "knows" it is in contact with the box.

It is a good exercise to highlight the IK and path planning capabilities but for sure still lot of work to be done to make a more funny and compelling video clip.

In the next video,  I wanted to play with prisma (c) an application really nice which allow the creation of artistic effect on videos and/or photos. So I created a short sequence (less than 15s) of the robot pushing the box and ran Prisma (c) on it!  Funny to watch

Paper available for download: Inverse kinematics for a Humanoid Robot : a mix between closed form and geometric solutions

In this paper we present a derivation of the forward kinematics (FK) and inverse kinematics (IK) of a humanoid
robot with 32 degrees of freedom, specically the ODOI platform.  The FK and IK are not solved for the entire 32 joints but instead divided into six parts:the two arms(seven joints each), the two legs (seven joints each), the torso (5 joints), and the head (2 joints).

In this paper a mix approach is introduced: a closed-form solution is proposed for the arms and the torso based on
[1] and a geometric solution is proposed for the legs.

[1] Hyungju Andy Park, Muhammad Ahmad Ali, and CS George Lee. Closed-form inverse kinematic position
solution for humanoid robots. International Journal of Humanoid Robotics, 9(03):1250022, 2012.

Téléchargement IKHumanoidRobot

Video testing the inverse kinematics software for a Humanoid robot

The robot is equipped with two arms, each arm with 7 DOF. Such arms offer lot of possibilities. However IK (Inverse kinematics) software is required to bring the end-effector at the right position.

This video shows a test of the Inverse kinematics software involving the two arms and the articulated torso.

First end-effectors are positionned and then the torso is moving while the end-effectors (almost) keep the pose.

I am writing a document describing the IK for the whole robot (Torso, Arms and legs). It is a mix of closed form and geometric solutions. If anyone is interested please leave me a message.

 

 

New 7DOF arms for the robot

I am working on a new 7DOF arm for the robot. The pic below shows the two arms connected to the upper torso.

I will write a paper detailing the Inverse Kinematics calculation for the whole robot (arms + torso + legs).It will be a combination of closed forms + geometric resolution.

If somebody is interested, let me know

How difficult is it to sell Social robots through Crowdfunding?

Introduction

Most of the social robots are going through crowdfunding (Indiegogo being the main platform).  

However it is important to notice that ALL of them are delaying the shipping to their backers by a significant amount of time (6 to 12 months or even years in the some cases).

The consequences are not negligible:

• Lot of backers ask for refunding meaning that the real number of people willing to acquire such social robot is diminishing;
• Lack of trust/credibility in the ability to deliver such social robots and new projects will not be able to reach their funding target through crowdfunding like Yumi from Omate which failed to raise US$ 100 000 despite quite attractive features and a nice design.

It is important to understand why because if these companies are not able to deliver, the “social robot” market will be badly considered by the public and it will be harder for new startups to come with a real product and convince that they can deliver in time.

In order to go further, let us pick the most popular projects that have raised more than US$ 500K through crowdfunding the last 3 years:

• JIBO the igniter of the “social robot wave”;
• BUDDY from a French startup Blue Frog Robotics;
• ALPHA 2 the humanoid robot from UBTECH, a Chinese based company;
• AIDO from InGen Dynamics, a US based company.

Video showing postures, voices and sounds

In this video I introduce different postures. This time I decided to make an experiment by recording some sounds and voices.The idea here is to show that if the voice and more important the tone of the voice are in "harmony" with the posture, the way you look at the robot is really different. The video includes 5 postures:

• Applaude ;
• Thinking ;
• A bit anxious ;
• A bit angry ;
• Time to take a rest

 

More stylized pics of the robot

ODOI project published in "Planète robots"

Thanks to Planète Robots who dedicated one page to the ODOI project:

 

First video of the "sitting tattletale bot"

I am exploring the idea of a robot sitting on a chair (let us call it a sitting tattletale bot) and taking various postures based on its mood and/or external events. In the latest case, one can specify how the robot react to the events.

For instance, you can assign a dedicated posture based on news content/headlines analysis (web scrapping) – here are some examples:

• Weather forecast: sunny the robot is happy, heavy raining it becomes sad, storm a bit anxious …
• Celebrities: you want to be informed if a celebrity is in couple with somebody and you want that the robot is happy about it – he will tell you by taking a happy posture (the robot can pick up one happy posture among several ones BUT if you want that this news makes it sad, it will adopt a sad posture;
• Sport: if your favorite team wins, the robot will be like supporters in the stadium or if the win loses, the robot will adopt an angry posture;
• Job reports / (anxious news in general): if the job reports is bad, the robot will inform you and adopt an anxious posture

The first step is to create some postures and see how it looks like, here is a first video showing the robot sitting down on a chair and taking two different postures.

 

A sitting robot which is mimicking various postures

The difference between a humanoid robot and the other ones is its body. It means that the robot is able to mimick daily life human postures in order to arouse feelings from the audience.

Take for example somebody who is sitting, he/her can sit in many different ways. In the picture below I represented only few of them:

I designed a built a chair for the robot and the challenge will be to mimick all of them.