I did not post since I finished the first version of the robot in January. It is because I am focusing on the gait algorithm – with the goal to release a video in June - as well as debugging the mechanical part of the robot.
I will post a note on the things I am learning – to share my experience with other robot makers. For instance all the frames are made of Resin and I noticed that some frames were bending, stressed by mechanical efforts – especially at the hip. So I had to reinforce them with brackets in Aluminum. It is quite a frustrating period because I need to understand how the structure of the robot is working in the real world and how to deal with “unexpected” (I did not think about them before) issues. Although it is frustrating it is also a necessary (sometimes exciting) learning period.
In this note, I want to talk about Design. I think that Artistic Design is really very important:
- To introduce robots in the human environment that can be accepted and/or tolerated by the population;
- To make them appealing so that somebody is considering purchase one of them.
So far only the Japanese robotics community is really addressing this issue. Tomotaka Takahashi is probably the most popular researcher who is producing cute and neat robots like the Ropid and recently Robi which is sold by DeAgostini in various country (Japan, Hong Kong and England).
This is why I am eager to work with designers in order to create “outer shell” that can fit the robot skeleton. I am happy to say that I initiated a collaboration with Dacosta Bayley who is running MarchOfRobot on Instagram (every day in March, artists are pushing a sketch picturing a robot - see #marchofrobots2015). He ran successfully a kickstarter campaign in 2014 in order to publish a book about his work.
We are in an early stage as the robot’s skeleton is not completely finalized but here are some sketches we are working on.