In this note, we will overview the main features of the ODOI platform. Finally I completed the whole design and one can see below how it looks like.
The main features are:
- An “old fashioned” head because we do not try to exhibit/imitate some kind of “human” face. We decided to design a head based on robot movies showing kind of mechanical robots;
- A “CMU CAM5 Pixy” allowing the possibility to trigger behaviors on blobs/colors detection. This case is quite easy to use at an affordable price;
- An articulated trunk similar to the one developed for the POPPY project. An articulated trunk allows the possibility to express a rich variety of feelings such as sadness, happiness or anger. Indeed, not only the face but the whole body is involved in the expression of feelings;
- An articulated pelvis. This is a very challenging topic because it is not address by the robotics community yet. I think that an articulated pelvis is mandatory if we want to increase the speed of the robot, increase its balance but also achieve rotation. Unfortunately so far the rotation of the pelvis will be in the horizontal plane only;
- Inclination of the Thigh which is also a feature of POPPY. Researchers such as Plas & Viel [1] showed that it reduced the lateral movement and increase balance in human gait;
- An articulated foot along with 5 pressure sensors. We think that an articulated foot combine with the articulated pelvis will lead to more fluent movement and increase the control of the balance as well;
- It will be actuated by Dynamixel motors from Robotis (15 MX28 T and 16 MX12W);
- The ODOI platform is 72cm tall.
More information will be posted later specially on the foot and the head to complete the design.
[1] Plas F., Viel E., Blanc Y. (1979), “La marche humaine, Kinesiology dynamique, Biomécanique et Pathomécanique”, Paris Masson 2ième Edition.