I have decided to hold up on Project Magnus
I have been working on this build for several years now and it looks like it will take several more to get it to where I want. I got so excited that it turned into something very complex. Takes soooo much time and money to build such a large robot from scratch. I wish I had started with something smaller and more manageable. I want something simpler I can experiment with NOW
....
I took an inventory and found enough stuff laying around the shop to do this.
A new robot is born! Meet T.E.C.H. (Tractable Electronic Computerized Humanoid)
T.E.C.H. will be a very basic robot made mostly from wood covered with Formica. No complex shapes, contours, or special effects (at least not yet
). Two wheel tank style drive with caster wheels in the front and back. Using Banebot ESC's with PWM inputs. Basically he will be a couple of wooden boxes bolted together with an EZ Board for brains, 12 V lawnmower battery, scooter wheels with chain drive, waist motor, two arms, and a dome covered head. I looked around for something to use as a head and came up with this mini boom box. What do ya think? Kinda gives him an alien look 
Plenty of room for the camera.
Anyone have any ideas on how to make this into a pan and tilt????
I have already hooked up the EZ Board and tried out the drive section using voice control and it worked great! Thanks DJ for such a cool controller!
My basic goals are for him to be able to follow me around while avoiding obstacles in his path and for him to be able to roam around autonomously without bumping into things or anyone. Hopefully, I will eventually give him a voice but, just want something simple for now. Here are a few pictures: What you see took about three weekends to throw together.
So let me know what you think.....
Other robots from Synthiam community
Toymaker's Altair Robots In Servo Magazine
Rb550f's Ez Robot Attacknid 6Lr
I just do e video, send to YouTube and post a link to it here, but ther is link on this page that says Add YouTub video, so that might be just as easy.
nice its a pretty cool looking bot and a strong one
Thank you. It's my life long dream to create this. I hope I have the perseverance to finish it.
Hey Rex, do you have any sound tracks from the original B9? I am looking for a few to add to my B9 hack for some cool responses. The MP3 trigger I am using will allow up to 40. THanks, Bret
do a google search for B9 sound bytes.
No Bret, I wish I did. I will see if I can help you find some.
What I wanted to do for Magnus was use a voice changer so I could speak through a wireless mike and have it come out of his speaker but, with my voice, sounding like a robot. That way I could have conversations through the robot with whoever was nearby. All the while, I would be hidden somewhere nearby, out of sight. Magnus will be strictly for show. All maneuvering and arm movements are R/C.
I have also looked into using text to voice software from CEPSTRAL
I have not purchased a license yet. I think they were somewhere around $40. (Have not checked in a while.) You pick the voice you want and you can add a robotic sound quality to it. What I was thinking of doing in this case was to create an Excel spreadsheet that contained a bunch of text phrases that when I clicked on them they would play a wav file. You could have all kinds of ready made phrases to choose from for many different responses to peoples questions. Yeah it would be crude but it works.
There is also another web site called
Screamingbee
that has a lot of cool voice effects. It can change your voice into most any thing you can think of from monsters to elves, etc. with all kinds of other features such as echo and reverb. It can make your voice really deep sounding or high pitched. Even change a man's voice to woman or the other way around. But, alas, even with all that, I could not settle on a voice. I guess I'm too picky.