Well as some already know we went to Amsterdam for the Arduino day. The event was organized by Richard and Bram of Ground3D, whom I've met during the 55 printers world record last year in Utrecht.
It took place on the Overkant in Amsterdam, a rather huge working place, where makers gather to build things. The makers had brought their creations along and of course there was some interesting things to see and to talk about. Arduino was one of the subject. :)
Leon, an InMoov follower, although he hasn't started to build one, was there and had brought some amazing copters made partly with a 3D printer and avery nice CNC he has recently developped. I also had the occasion to test a self balancing mecanism for cameras which gave me some ideas for the hips rotations.
Using InMoov2.0 in public for the first time was interesting, everything worked well. I really enjoyed to "detach" "attach" the servos from power source through voice commands. The 4PID worked perfect. The "search humans" had a rough time because of too many faces to chose from. Tracking an object seemed a bit less accurate than before, but all the other commands worked very nicely.
This Lady has taken good care of me, preparing "toasties" for my lunch and coffees. Very nice!
Okay, as I said before to go to Roma, parts for the rest of the Torso are ready for download. This includes the surroundings of the kinect and it's casing. You will need a whole bunch of parts which are added to thetorso CubeHerodownloads.
I was away for a while, and of course when I travel, I don't cary my 3D printer with me. Plus, being away in the desert makes it difficult to comuunicate with internet. Since I released the finger prosthetic for Bionico, I was impatient to print it. Fortunatly Morris, on the other side of the Atlantic had his printer ready for testing. He was the first one to print the finger and got me some feedback. You can see his blog here So I was designing on my computer in the desert and he was printing the parts along, and everytime some thing was not correct in my design, he would notify me and I could check the pictures posted on his blog to modify the design in consequences. This took us a lot of time after all. But we got to move on and thanks a lot to him. The three bellow pictures are from his blog:
Being back from the desert, I was then able to print the finger. There was still things that were not correct. I also ordered another type of motor which is a 6V planetary gear motor with a ration of 154:1 from Pololu. So the casing had to be redesigned again. There is a very small worm gear that actuate the finger and I printed it in ABS but it is definitly too fragile, so it either needs to be modified or printed in stainless steel. You can get it by Shapeways here.
I left both versions on Thingiverse because it can be handy for other projects.
With the servo Corona DS238HV use these files:
-FingerWormV1.stl
-ServoHolderV2.stl
-PhalangeV6.stl
-ActuatorsV3.stl With the planetary gear motor use these files:
-FingerWormV2.stl
-MotorHolderV3mid.stl
-MotorHolderV3top.stl
-PhalangeV6.stl
-ActuatorsV3.stl
It was pretty hard to make that video, because the small wormgear breaks when the finger reach the end of it's run. Unfortunatly I haven't yet figured out how to set a time delay on my script and a reverse of polarity. Using DC motors and servos is not the same when it comes to create a script in the Arduino. The big news:
InMoov is selected and invited for the European Makerfaire Edition in Roma. So I will be going to Italy and have the pleasure to meet all the italian and european geeks that attend this event. I hope to get some time to make the robot usable, it's going to be something to put the full InMoov in a suitcase. Myrobotlab is also selected to attend the Makerfaire, Alessandro will be the Ambassador of MRL. Leonardo who has created a superheroe InMoov will attend the faire as well, hopefully his suitcase is big enough for to bring his robot. Leonardo his also working to make us a real website. And Bionico, of course, is also selected for the Makerfaire, we are currently getting a hand ready for Nicolas. Hugues is hard at work on all the stage levels. Here is a french article about us in LE MONDE newspaper.
Mmmh, Since InMoov hand has been released on Thingiverse in 2012, I received demands on
how to use it as a prosthetic. I was always a bit skeptical about it. I knew the initial design was not
really adapted for that matter and I think it could be better done if I kept
the prosthetic perspective in mind. Lately a french FabLab of Rennes asked me if they
could use InMoov for their project. So, I have been working on this for about three full days. I had made a first design very simple to see if it could actually work. I presented it in Rennes for the Bionico project. The idea is to get a finger that gets actuated mechanically instead of using braid lines to pull the fingers.
It may look similar, but I tell you, it isn't. This little baby really took me a hell of a time to design. When things are small, you need to take a lot in consideration with our 3D printers. First, all parts should be printable without or almost without support, the thickness of the walls have to be thick enough to be printed with a reasonable definition. Parts should be easy to assemble. And last, parts shouldn't require too much quality from our printers...
I know this is not the legs... Many of you are waiting to see what's next to download for your robot. But this is important, if it can help disabled people, it is urgent. You can download this prototype here. Remember this hasn't been printed yet and may have problems that I still need to resolve. It is uploaded for the FabLab of Rennes to check movements and frictions under Freecad. This could, if it has enough strength under load, replace the hands of InMoov later on. It is meant to work with a Corona DS238HV servo. Also Leonardo and I have been setting up a website for InMoov, it isn't ready yet, but things are coming. Leonardo has been working hard on it, and I have been asking for to modify things, so poor Leonardo is under load. Also I want to thanks the donators, for their generosity. It will help us to keep the site up. Jha has made a new script for mouth movement and Grog has been working to add it in the InMoov service. I still need to test that to see how that works, but if it's good, InMoov should be able to move his jaw everytime he says something. Cool! The legs... That's what I'm going to focuse on now. Remember I had made the foot. This foot needs work and I need to redesign the ankle because I want to add a servo to get more DOF. So that's the next goal. I have worked on the Knee but it is not clear yet how I want to actuate it. So much work for so little time.
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