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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
Ericez's Dog The Little Robodog Ez-B V.4
Jstarne1's Mr Freeze Costume Controlled By Android Phone...
@toymaker, @d.cochran, @dave, @warpig: A lot of well-founded concerns I think. Cloudservices rely on your connection, without it your machinery is not operating properly. Also the dedicated sensors and local processing probably outperform whatever you can find as a service.
I'm am a software guy. For me it is easier to build a larger software system rather than expanding the hardware configuration. If I have an Alan standing in my house I want it to operate whenever I talk to it, without having a computer running 24/7 in my apartment. Hence my setup would probably be to turn my A.I. software in a cloud service and run it on some rented cloud processing power. Alan can then obtain all required input from the wifi router. The ezb4 would be permanently plugged in.
3rd party services I might use are the ivona voice service and perhaps emotient (though I haven't really looked close at it). Also I'm wondering what frameworks like IBM's Watson platform may offer in the near future in terms of cognitive computing services.
My downtime per year is about 5 hours on average. My privacy would be decreased as Alan will share privacy sensitive data to the cloud which may be intercepted. But I can live with that risk. Alan won't be an life-depending system. I see it as a piece of art and entertainment. If a cloud service stops, I can look at alternatives/use some 3rd party local software or perhaps even homebrew. Finally, data can be backed up locally or across two cloud parties if necessary. The chance of losing everything is then about as high as losing the data in the cloud and simultaneously having a fire in your local storage area.
Hey Bas, As far as Watson goes, one of my devs is up to his ears in it. It is really cool and cognitive reasoning and learning is being done there. There are costs associated but they are very minimal for a single person or household. If you stay with java it is pretty much free. Check out BlueMix. I am debating on becoming an IBM partner for Watson but I need to look over the paperwork involved.
Anyway, I too am a software person, about 23 years of programming experience. I understand where you are coming from. If I were building something for myself, I would look at software driven systems. Something that I can write and take care of for myself for only myself is one thing and those are nice times. Once you go beyond that, there are a lot of other considerations.
I have no problem with the cloud but I also know how to tell what is going out of my network to the cloud. I also understand concerns about privacy. It is something that will be going away soon I am afraid. IoT will make a lot of great advancements but there are a lot of security issues that come with it.
Anyway, Alan is going to do great Will. I think you have something really cool going on and I cant wait to see it go live.
I don't know. Are we hijacking this thread with all this talk of cloud-based vs local processing? I thought I'd ask before throwing in my two cents worth.
While it pertains, I do feel like it has been hijacked. That is the reason for my last statement. It is good to see conversations of how people plan to use Alan and so I do think it pertains.
I think Will will jump in if he thinks we're hijacking the thread. I think the cloud discussion is valuable. It's nice to know if Alan's future AI will be in the cloud, local, or a hybrid of both - that will help set my expectations of what I'll be doing wiyh him.
Bottom line for me though is I'm ready to support this project!
Question for Will: after Alan is launched, is there going to be an Alan forum at the getaheadinrobotics.com site, or will continue discussion here?
Alan is only hardware. There is no software or robot controller that comes with it. That is entirely up to what you want to do with it. This is the last that I heard anyway. Maybe it has changed but I don't think it will.
Absolutely keep discussing on topic or not, it does keep my gears a turning! I've loved all the discussions, comments and questions!
@warpig, there will be a forum once he's released. I also am planning an extensive video library on assembling every component, another on creating mods like LEDs, and extensive painting videos, etc. the forums will allow for personal trouble shooting, upgrade suggestions and so on.
@d.cochran just wanted you to know, EZ-AI is mentioned on nearly every paragraph of my servo magazine article! Ha! Your gonna have a ton of users. I just released info on Facebook today and the people went crazy... Looking very very good!