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Edit: Kickstarter campaign failed in 2015.
Starting in 2025 you can build an interactive Alan by joining my Robotics Courseware (links coming soon). You can follow along with detailed video instructions starting with 3d printing parts. Off the shelf hardware components links are included with the BOM. Don't miss out! Be sure to get a head in robotics. Build at you own pace. Coming soon.
Introducing Alan, the android head robot platform kit, soon to be released on Kickstarter.
First a quick introduction. For those that may not know me. I've been a make up effects artist in the film industry for the past 23 years. Robots have always fascinated me since I was a kid growing up in Ohio and watching Lost in Space episodes. That interest never left me and when starting work in the film industry, I taught myself animatronics. That is I would be called upon to make something move via radio controlled, a puppet, or a toaster or ? As CGI took over the animatronics part of my industry, I focused my free time on using that knowledge for robotics. When I saw prosumer 3D printers come on the market 8 years ago, I knew I could get some of my ideas to the table with out the need for a garage full of CNC machines.
Alan is a culmination of of both technologies, animatronics and 3D printing. When this idea started 3 years ago, I had just found EZ Robots and knew that I could build an interestingly designed kit for everyone so they could experiment with robotics. A platform that personifies how we will interact with robots and androids in the near future, by looking them in the face.
My first challenge was to make sure I leaped over the "uncanny valley". To do so, I took the human dimensions and changed them a bit, eyes wider apart, downplayed high details and added features that were without a doubt not human and certainly robotic in form.
The second challenge was keeping the cost down for consumers. A head like this in the film industry, filled with lots of motions like brow, smile, etc would costs $10's of thousands of dollars. So I built Alan with a modular design in mind. Meaning that the store front will carry modules that will allow you to customize and upgrade the same robot without having to buy a whole new head. As an example the front subskull can be replaced with a module with brow movement, allowing you to keep the entire head and eye mechanism. Other silicone skins will become available different colors and genders, styles, etc. The low cost introductory head will include about 22 parts, easy to assemble, with the consumer supplying servos, power supplies EZB, etc. on their own. My website will include links to all the accessories needed, plus mods like LED eyes, built in audio systems and so on. All the parts will be molded and manufactured in Los Angeles. There will be no pressure injected molding of parts this time around. These are cold cast high impact plastic parts and platinum silicone skins. Alans future may include a full body, if the Kickstarter is successful. And you can certainly use this as a replacement head for InMoov . I will look at altering the open source STL files to be able to accept my heads.
I always knew that the EZB would be Alan's brains. And I will promote it as such. As we all know, DJ's commitment and advancement to the EZB is leading us into the future of robotics.There really is no other choice in my mind. But that's in part because I'm no programmer
D. Cochran's EZ-AI is a boon to Alans development. I look forward to where David takes it. And although I have it installed I have yet to implement it with Alan for a few more weeks. All of these working together will be highlighted on the Kickstater video.
I have several more weeks to finish the paint job and run a new hero silicone skin. Then there is the very important Kickstarter video. So we are at least 4 weeks out. But I will post here the links to both the Kickstarter and Alans website when they go live and as Alan progresses.
I look forward to your ideas for programming and how you would mod him. I'd also like to hear how you would like to see him develop. Thanks for your time and enjoy the development pictures and video.
All the best,
Will
Programming
Camera, Speech recognition, speech synthesis, pad touch,
Parts & Materials
Dynamixels, Arduino, USB camera, EZB 4, micro servos and regular servos
Other robots from Synthiam community
DJ's Irobot Roomba Hack
DJ's At Home With Jd
OK great info. I set up SSL for robomodix and getaheadinrobotics.
Looks like it is live now.
Alan
Great!
Have you seen the new Furhat robot head ?
Yup they are one of our competitors. Cruchbase, says they got $2.5 million in seed funding last year to develop it. So far they have it in an airport in Germany. I personally think that the design is cheap and the concept is borrowed from another company called Robo Thespian, whom created a head like this some time ago. And I might add that was borrowed from the movie AI (that I worked on) in the flesh fair, there is a robot that was rear projected.
The animation on the home page gives the impression that it has actual animatronic facial features. Then you watch the video and see it's rear projection. It would be interesting to see how it looks in a brightly-lit area. Also - what happens if/when the projector goes down? Will it be a user-replaceable part, or ship back to Furhat? In any case, I"m betting it won't be inexpensive!
TRON-type light halos seem to be very popular. For me, it's a wow factor that soon becomes distracting and soon gets shut off (hey - I even put tape over USB hubs if the indicators are too bright!).
Cost will be a factor; also the market you are shooting for. The Furhat site says a personal robot can be had "with restrictions", and the O/S is proprietary. Alan has a clear advantage there (if EZ-B is an option). A user would have a broad palette to develop Alan's skills - as well as have an established user base to help.
All that said, don't forget to capitalize on "Designed and built by an Award-winning Hollywood Special Effects artist" in your sales pitch.
Edit: after watching a couple of videos, I've decided the robot is pretty creepy; kind of bordering on "uncanny valley". Were this head on a mobile body, I think I'd run like hell!
@warpig, ive been watching them for about a year now, and their prototype had maybe $34.00 worth of material in it. They are definitely targeting corporations and prolly charging the same that robo thesibian charges which is about $10,000 a head when you add in all the features and software.
And you are correct the projectors will eventually burn out or maybe LED projectors, but those have a low lumens. They had issues getting it bright enough in the airport in Germany. Near windows would literally be a wash out.
...i sure would like $2.5 million in seed...what i could build with that kinda support...
FWIW, Furhat seems to have used retro projection as early as 2011: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvXyy-JakqY long before Robo Thespian. And funnily enough I think that early version looked better.
Personally im not a fan of the look at all. Its barely better than looking at a rendered head on a screen (gerty in Moon comes to mind
) and in many ways, its worse. But it is a relatively simple way to achieve things that may be important for some applications and really hard to do with a traditional robot
What impressives me most is their software particularly the speech engine. I cant tell if its text to speech or a voice actor. The situational awareness and their natural language understanding also appears top notch, though its hard to judge as most things Ive seen are (scripted?) interactions with the developers, so it would be interesting to see how it handles a conversation with a random person.
fxrtst, I think you're wrong considering them a (direct) competitor. I see them primarily as a AI/speech software company who made a plastic shell to showcase their product. Youre pretty much the exact opposite, using alexa/siri/bing to showcase your robotic head. Id also say they would attract funding even if their robot head was a 17" LCD monitor. If the software is their own IP and there is not some commercially available third party speech / AI engine underpinning their product, then $2.5M seems like a bargain as that amount is not going to get you anywhere close to that from a software side when starting from scratch (or from ezb)