Neck for InMoov

You can now download the neck with the mechanism that makes the head tilt and pan. 
Get it on Cubehero.
Okay, I guess this is going to be like this. The head contains many parts, so I divised in different sections.
Neck
Skull
Ear
Jaw
Eyes 
There is a part of the skull that is necessary for to do the final mounting of the neck mechanism with servos, it is situated at the rear of the head. I made a piece called "temporary", which you will withdraw once I upload the skull.
I have to make the step by step of the neck, pictures are done, but I need to write the text.
Hope you enjoy it.

InMoov gets surprised!

When I said to my wife, Grog (MyRobotLab) and I have decided it was time to start teaching InMoov, and for that matter I should be looking for colorful objects, she started to become sneaky.

Everytime I was coming in our room she was hidding stuff, or it seemed so.

Tonight the mystery was revealed!
InMoov had is own little toy robot!

Isn't that great, I had to post it. I think it's so cute that InMoov is going to learn very fast how to grab it.

I love the eyes and hook on the head. 
 
Too bad it can't be printed, as I'm sure many of you would like to have it for further test on InMoov or just to have with you during your hard moments of life.

InMoov makes the front cover.

A few months ago I was asked by an American set designer, if I would let them use InMoov hand for to make the front cover of The Atlantic magazine.
Attribution is to be expected inside the magazine. Behing abroad, I have not the chance to buy it for to check it out.

Looking at the result, they did a good job on the finishing touch. If I remember correctly, it was printed in PLA with a 0.3mm thickness. They did a finishing coating with paint, but I would guess they had to use a primer with a good sanding job.

Here is the article of CNN, which came out a few weeks ago.

Photo Bart Cook

Photo Bart Cook

Eye Mechanism

Funny how a little mechanism like this can be difficult to create. It is mainly due to the space where it all has to fit.Although I used small XGD-11HMB servos, they still appear big in there. 
I had done a first mechanism, but every part were just too fragile and flexible. 
So okay, I decided to review it all and turn the bottom servo in another position to get it in there with extra thickness in all the plastic parts.

It is still a bit wobbly.

There is a space for a third servo on the second eye, if one wants to have eyes that wouldn't move simultaneously, Brrr scary freak.

I dismantled the rubber part of my Hercule HD camera and kept only the hard plastic angle which contains the camera. I had previously extracted the microphone and added extra length on the wires, in order to have the microphone in the ears. As you probably have read in some earlier post, sound is a difficult part, which I tend to put further in the future, when I really get extra info. For now a simple bluetooth head set microphone does the trick, between me, the PC and InMoov.

My Hercule HD camera is hot glued on the template support where it belongs on the eye mechanism. On the other template, I could set another camera. But for now, I just did two photocopy papers glued on the mobile template and on the Hercule camera. It isn't fancy, but having only one eye, made him look scary, and I couldn't leave the poor guy like that.

Now, I need to plug that and try to see what happens! 
Isn't that fun!
 

InMoov eye mechanism, inside view

InMoov eye mechanism, side view

InMoov eye mechanism, front view. You can see here the jaw mechanism.

 

Printing parts

Like I said on the forum two weeks ago, after the request of builders without printers, I contacted a Printing service which I work with sometimes, I knew their prices would be high...
So, I finally got prices from them. The news isn't so great.
Prices are too high to my taste. Way too high.You might as well buy yourself a printer and start printing, you would be better off. The two arms + torso comes in a range of 3000 euros.

The goal of InMoov is to be built at a reasonable price for most DIYers. 
While printing on your own machine there is the cost of electricity and materials of course. Time consuming doesn't cost you if you do this for the fun (that's the way I see it), but a printing service takes that in consideration and the price goes way up.

Now I'm up with another option, but I still need to gather more details about it, because it is a big step.
We will see in a few weeks if this new plan is viable. 

In the meantime, I started to work on a leg for the fun.

The Replicant

Talking about replication, this one striked me!
This was posted on Here by Jhack.

InMoov Vision Tracking

Last night I made a test after Grog from MyrobotLab has been improving the service tracking for InMoov.
It works pretty well out of the box, I am always amazed how Grog can do those modifications. The movements are rather smooth. If I move the object too fast, InMoov loses the track, so there is a bit of tweaking to do, but there is solutions.
The movement of the head uses only two servos for now, up/down, left/right. There is another servo (HK15298) for to actuate the jaw, but it isn't actif yet. Then two small servos (XGD-11HMB) will be used for to actuate the eyes/camera. I haven't tried these small servos yet, but they can actuate 3kg at 6V, it should be enough. It means later, four servos will be using PID controlled for the vision tracking. 
We should get further very soon I think.