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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
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Such a great project, Will, what servos are you design and how many?
Nomad,
Good luck with that. Locks are for honest people.Locking down rights to intellectual property like the written word, software, music and even the design of mechanical stuff has been very hard to do since we figured out how to copy things. First it was carbon paper, then cassette tapes, then digital now 3D printing. Now people think it's their inherent right to copy other people's work for free. I'm certainly not an expert but personally I see no real way to stop any of this. As far as locking down a digital file, all that is needed to start sharing unpaid for copies is to give a password at the same time. That or some hacker to get into the file and break the protection. Maybe Nomad is right, the only way is to have an authority monitor, watch and step in and severely punish the perp. Sadly then the world slips into oppression and all creativity is suffocated. Double edged sword syndrome.
@Will, I think your vision and talent is amazing. Thanks for sharing it with us. Your choices in my opinion; protect it or give it away. I hope you find a way forward and a way to protect your work. Again, my opinion; I think the best you will be able to do monetarily is to realize limited returns, That is unless you can sell your product in enough volume and at a price point that will offset the pirates. With your B9 silicone rubber arms you are able to offer a product that is very, very hard to copy due to the design and skill needed to reproduce them. There's not too many people that can do what you can do or they don't want to. On the other hand, reproducing digital files are so easy.
Sorry for the negative post. Being the Mayor of Realsville is depressing sometimes.
I have to agree with Dave's Post the other thing you need to remember is bringing a legal suit against someone also cost money, and takes time. Once the files are out in the wild you will never be able to stop it. Look at the Tommy Lee Pamala Anderson sex tape they spent millions trying to get that back are you really ready for that? It becomes not cost effective at some point. I think the best you could do is sell it as a complete boxed kit with everything needed like a retail product and sell it on Amazon and hobby shops. This does not mean it won't be copied by others. It also means you would need cash to develop manufacturing, packaging, purchasing the required electronics to include in the kit. If you have ever looked into having injected plastic molding molds made you know they cost a lot of money.
Anyway I wish you the best while making your decision!
You can file a design patent. This is a patent that is used for protecting your intellectual property rights around the design. So if others infringe on your work you have grounds to take them to court. The challenge is design patients are easy to get around by modifications and enforcement really isn't financially viable unless you are dealing with a large corporation who has used your work. China (and now Russia) will basically ignore your rights anyway and this is where any mass production of clones would occur.
The other approach is just make it easy for everyone to copy. Put in a Creative Commons licence that allows copy with attribution. https://creativecommons.org/about/cclicenses/ This works well for products example the Prusa 3D printer. Most people purchase a genuine one because the clones always give problems and it is a pain trying to source all the components but when a part breaks you just press print.
I think the best example is the IBM PC. They made a PC with an industry standard bus. Anyone could clone the PC, anyone could make peripherals for the PC and companies did. People would buy an IBM PC and 3rd party peripherals like video cards hard drives etc or they would buy clones and genuine IBM peripherals like monitors and printers. If you actually wanted something that was reliable and also wanted support you purchased 100% IBM Hardware.
If you build a common base robotics platform and position it as pseudo industry standard others will build off it. Companies and individuals will always want to buy the original if they have the budget and if not you can still make money through the adoption of your robotics platform and the expansion of the ecosystem.
hi all
dave
your post is not negative but really honest . that is what will needs . the more idea 's people bring the better will can deside what to do .
smiller29
am gessing there will be always a way to copie . your idea sounds very promising . sell it in a box . see what chinese do . taking pictures off averythin and make knock -off's .
will
i see you posted many awesome pictures off all the parts .these can used to , make copie's allreddy . i would remove those pictures . dont take too much time in this . others will have something similar robot reddy . and its what they say , first come firts gets served .
i allreddy found a copie off the mouth piece . look at the video 8.04 minutes .
@perry Still working out the details...by moving all the head componients down into the chest I can lighten the load of the head. My Alans have Dynamixels but they are very pricey. I'm moving the design to 1/5th sized servos for the neck and head rotation with a few standard and micros servo thrown in. One servo needs to be a fast analog, which hard to find these days. There will be a complete BOM and links to sources in the courseware. As supplies change, I'll make adjustments to the files to match those..(Ie China stops selling a particular servo I am using in the designs, etc.)
To all,
Thanks for all the insight. I've protected myself with a design patent some time back.
The bottom rung on my business plan starts with courseware. The course will include all the assembly videos, painting, programming and the BOMs. Students/Customers will be assigned an ID number. They will use this ID number to make upgrade purchases in the online store, (i.e alans skin, STLs new ears etc.) Each file will have a hidden feature somewhere in all the STLs known only by me. This feature is custom to each ID. If STLs get out into the wild I will know who leaked it by looking at the STLs if posted online.
An amazing person contacted me onine, with this fantastic tip for moving STLs around.