The Altair Robot Chronicles

Haha .." waiting for last drops! " love it! Looking forward to more videos. Thanks Tony!

Fantastic logic behind the animation Tony.

Very smooth movements. Didn't spill a drop. I can't imagine the programming that is behind this routine.

Now that is amazing! eek

Very cool. So I gotta ask... auto position, or individual scripting? Thanks. Chris

Thanks guys! for the kind words.

@kamaroman68 it is a mix of both auto and scripting.

Tony

The ALTAIR Robot Chronicles [Part 2] - Take photo and analyse - Face Recognition with Emotional and Empathy Reactions.

For humans to co-exist with robots, I believe that they will need to show Affective Empathy (AE) so they are not just perceived as cold calculating machines. This video shows what AE might look like in a robot/human interaction.

Tony

Tony, That is amazing, such great details in the responses. Your props are also very well done, I love getting updates on your work. Can the EZ1 analyze what it sees across the room? Steve S

Bravo! I love it! As always, beautiful job! Altair is coming of age!

I continue to be blown away by what you continue to accomplish in this robot. This is cutting edge stuff.

Love it!

"Please insert photo" may be swapped with "Pass me a photo" or something if you're going for a more human interaction

I hope you keep posting videos like this!

All without the cloud! Great job Tony. That Omron is an amazing sensor.

Very! Quite impressive indeed. Are you still using Cortana for speech recognition?

Yeah I've ordered one of those Omeron sensors to try out.

@fxrtst Let me know how it works out for you Will... When I sell a kidney on eBay I may want one of these too...

@Tony... Dude you have skills I wish I had... thanks for sharing

...good thing your body only needs one to live!

@Will... I never said it was my first kidney.. Hmmm, just how much is dialysis? Wooo, hooo free health care

Hahahha...oh well we have Obama care...oh wait.........

@Tony Great work, very impressive!

Thanks, everyone for the kind words and encouragement!

Steve, the HVC-P2 can analyse faces from up to 3.2m (10.5 feet) away.

DJ, I have a few more videos in the pipeline showing various things and will keep filming while there is interest. I have not changed over to Cortana yet, strangely I am finding that the regular MS speech recognition seems to be working much better these days.

Will, I can recommend the HVC-P2 which actually has 10 vision functions these are:- 1) Face Detection, 2) Human Body Detection, 3) Gender Estimation, 4) Age Estimation, 5) Gaze Estimation, 6) Facial Pose Estimation, 7) Face Recognition, 8) Expression Estimation (satisfied, unsatisfied, five different expressions: happiness, surprise, anger, sadness and neutral), 9) Hand Detection, 10) Blink Estimation.

I do some pre-processing before the vision data goes to the v4, this saves valuable processing time on the v4 for other things - with a dedicated PIC I can do stuff like stabilizing the data, for example the age algorithm can jump a bit from one scan to another, so I use a median filter to lose the spurious age outputs and make it all settle down to an accurate age estimation. The PIC then decides if the latest scan data has anything new and if so packets it all up for a single send to the v4.

I know the P2 is expensive, but you get a lot of human vision processing for the money!

Tony

Tony, where do you buy the HVC-P2 in the UK, the only supplier I can see in the UK is Mouser and needs to be pre-ordered?

Cheers Chris.

Chris, I originally bought from them from the States, but I got the last two from Anglia Components

www.anglia-live.com/

Not sure if you will have to open an account with them before they will supply?

Tony

Thanks, I'll have a look.

Cheers Chris.

Thanks, Tony , I enjoyed that video. :-)

Thanks Mel! its good to see you back on the forum.

Tony

The ALTAIR Robot Chronicles [Part 3] - EZ:1 sensor tour

The EZ:1 Robot gives us a tour of his sensors and what they do.

Tony

Really cool Tony. Also cool that you had the Altair EZ1 do the job of showing his different sensors.

Great video.

I apologize in advance if you already cover this in a different threaded discussion. How do you power this masterpiece, great work on the sensors integrations.

@PJ_Dtechy, I don't know what Tony is using but here is an old discussion with what he was looking at at the time. https://synthiam.com/Community/Questions/7625

If I remember right, he went with something else that was smaller, but I don't remember exactly what it was.

Mind blowing as usual. I'm very interested in the magnetic wrapped thing-a-ma-jig that detects objects 360 around the robot. Is this something you built and does it interfer with any electronics?

Hi Tony. Great work you have accomplished..I would love to see a video of the EZ 2 robot in action. The EZ 2 styling is my favorite,would love to get my hands on a body kit without electronics.

@PJ_Dtechy, I currently use a 12v 10,000mAh NIMH battery that give around 6-7 hours operation of the EZ:1 (depending on use). Interestingly I tried a 18,000mAh lithium powerblock (about half the weight of NIMH) but only get around 4-5 hours operation.

Dave, I use a low cost car electromagnetic parking sensor - this is the model that I use and it is less than £10 to buy on ebay

www.ebay.co.uk/itm/like/232145071026?lpid=122&chn=ps&adgroupid=36165537022&rlsatarget=pla-277568765470&adtype=pla&poi=&googleloc=1006565&device=c&campaignid=738474636&crdt=0

More information here

www.ebay.co.uk/gds/The-Truth-About-No-Holes-Car-Parking-Sensors-/10000000008152561/g.html

@rb550f, The Bosch worm motor drives was a game changer, with huge torque, zero holding current and being virtually silent they were a no-brainer to make an efficient and functional arm. But the problem for the EZ:2 design (arms) is that the Bosch units are too big. The EZ:2 arms had regular high torque servos that were very noisy as can be heard in this video

The concept for the EZ:2 was a modular 4 section build that could be packed smaller to reduce the shipping volume to other countries, but it became clear to me back in 2014 that the business sector for large home/hobby built robots was then way too small for the huge investment required - from this the EZ:1 platform with the Bosch drives looked to be the best way forward for developing and testing ideas.

Tony

Love the videos...keep them coming...you've worked so hard on this robot so great to see him working and explaining how he functions!

Thanks Will! The ALTAIR Chronicles Part 4 will be put up soon.

Tony

The ALTAIR Robot Chronicles [Part 4] - 2017: A Robot/Ai Odyssey When ALTAIR and Alexa met HAL9000

Building Robots should be fun too so Part 4 takes us into the World of science fiction (HAL9000) and science fact with ALTAIR EZ:1 and Alexa

Tony

Hahahaha - wow, now that is the laugh i needed this morning. "Sorry about this, i know it's a bit silly"

Wonderful!

Tony, that was great! Thank you

I'm loving your videos. Very entertaining. Its so cool to watch the two computers interact.

What timing, just last night I was loading 25 mp3 Hal9000 sound clips into my ARC so my B9 Robot can do impersonations with them. Looks like we're both at a fun stage of our builds.

Haha! Excellent interaction!

Lol, that was cool. I like the expression on Ez1's face. Very nice build.

Thanks again everyone for all the kind words!

Here is a sensor detail of the EZ:1 robot

Tony

Wow that guy is loaded! Ready for any adventure!

I really like that cliff/fall detector and your thermal imagery...is that like an actual Flir camera or just a heat sensor? I am thinking about getting the Flir camera adapter for my Android cell phone to use on my robot but it is expensive At any rate,very cool what you have done,following your progress. This bot is so impressive and since I am a huge fan of the old Cylons from the 80's tv show, you may have actually started the real robot revolt that will kill us all,LoL! But I will still be a big fan of them!

The ALTAIR Robot Chronicles [Part 5] Introducing a CMS (Collaborative Mobile Social) type Robot

Collaborative - where EZ:1 can use my dexterity to achieve things while working with humans and other robots

Mobile - because EZ:1 can move around freely

Social - because EZ:1 can communicate in a human like manner

A video showing the EZ:1 Robots expressive abilities using meaningful range of movements and animation playback.

Tony, What great combinations of facial expressions tied to body movements, and his eyes are a window to his feelings. Steve S

Tony, Brilliant! This guy is packed with the future. He's really to the point now where there is nothing else to say short of amazing. It's hard to comprehend all the advanced tech you have packed into this robot. What's really amazing to me is how nicely it all works in harmony. You really dome a great job tieing it all together with you're masterful use of your self designed subsystems and coding. WOW. Of course I've learned to never expect less from you.

Another fantastic video! I plan to watch Davids video this weekend with your interview. Can't wait!

Thanks, Steve,Dave,Will

Here is jpeg of some of the EZ:1 Robots expressive abilities using meaningful range of movements and animation playback.

Tony

Just watched your video...amazing

My ALTAIR robots have been featured in the Inquisitr here is the article

www.inquisitr.com/4193452/alexa-meets-altair-a-robotic-conversation/

It looks like there will also be an article in the July edition of servo Magazine.

Any of you guys on Instagram? I have recently joined it and it would be great to follow any of you.

https://www.instagram.com/toymaker2/

Tony

I will join Instagram very soon, once i do it would be a pleasure to follow you there TM.

@NEWAGETOMY, thanks!

Tony

The ALTAIR EZ:1 robot gets into JukinVideo Best Videos Compilation Week 1 March 2018

Tony

Congrats, Tony - that's cool to have your video discovered and found randomly like that!