Re: Fully functional Bipedal social Robot.
Conundrum, Sat Aug 26 2017, 06:05PM

Ambitious project!
I might have some micro servos someplace, the big problem is that they have to be modified as those brushed trimpots always fail with time.
I had an idea to do this with larger servos originally intended for automotive use as a magnetic rotation system would have the advantage of single/multiturn with a single unit.

Re: Fully functional Bipedal social Robot.
Chris Cristini, Sun Aug 27 2017, 12:31AM

Small update I took a good part of the day making its shoulders and a part of its chest hoping I can find solder able servo horns for large scale that would make life easier for the shoulders simple linkages made from the galvanized wire won't be strong enough to lift the arms.






Here is another short video.


There is obviously a whole lot left not even mentioning figuring out what to use for a skin like latex foam or something and the molds. I now work 2 jobs and work on this at least 2hrs a day its so far been just a little bit over a week so I have come pretty far I think.

Thank you Conundrum I think all of the servos I use will be metal gear for the hopes of longevity for a prototype anyway. I also hope to look at A.I like a hardware/software Neural network.

Re: Fully functional Bipedal social Robot.
Conundrum, Tue Sept 05 2017, 07:15AM

Yeah, Movidius chips may be useful here.

Also worth looking into, repurposing 1080Ti graphics cards for DL.

Re: Fully functional Bipedal social Robot.
Chris Cristini, Tue Sept 05 2017, 04:36PM

Well I have so much to learn about AI do you mean Definition Logics?
Lol Deep Learning.
Movidius at $80 a stick hope 1or2 will do :)
Also Li Poly or 18650 I hope to keep low power but windshield wiper motors as servos might be power hungry.

Re: Fully functional Bipedal social Robot.
Conundrum, Tue Sept 05 2017, 06:35PM

Doing some work now, haven't managed to get any yet as everywhere is out of stock.

I did however get a Zero W, and in principle a large enough array of these might be enough for my needs.

Re: Fully functional Bipedal social Robot.
Hazmatt_(The Underdog), Wed Sept 06 2017, 01:05AM

HAHAHAH 5 nights at Chris' Place. HEHEH.

No but seriously, why would you want it to be a social robot? Why not an anti-social robot? I think that would be more fun, and probably more difficult to come up with a "sarcasm" subroutine.

Re: Fully functional Bipedal social Robot.
Chris Cristini, Wed Sept 06 2017, 04:38PM

Hah 5 nights at Chris's I feel because its for professional reasons it will be kind but there is no reason it can't be rude as well :) I how ever can't even imagine how to come up with personality yet but if I keep working towards the completion I hope it won't be long before I dig in to that side of the project and hopefully it won't be creepy as heck.

Here is an update on arms allot of Movement like the human arm I started making hands but they look stupid I need to start over on that.

Here is the album from photo bucket due to needing to upgrade my account? Greed. I can't third party share.

Re: Fully functional Bipedal social Robot.
Hazmatt_(The Underdog), Thu Sept 07 2017, 02:25AM

Personality,

Well, I figure you can break it down to statistics right?

You have words and phrases that are keys that are compared to some kind of scoring system, more positive response from positive inputs about the robot, and a less positive response for criticism

100 you look nice today oh thank you

-100 you're a puppet HHAHAHAH foolish human... you're a puppet too

so it could grade the input, and the FFT of the tone of the person and have a random (pseudo random) aggregate of responses.

But it's just a thought, not sure how I would program that either.

Re: Fully functional Bipedal social Robot.
Chris Cristini, Thu Sept 07 2017, 01:17PM

That's an awesome idea I have a bit more faith in this now.

So I am not sure if this has been covered on this forum but Lattepanda or Udoo X86 my plan is to use Linux so the Lattepanda is pretty much ruled out due to the strange Bios. Udoo X86 supports the good stuff and I'd like to use the fastest M.2 SSD I can find Hoping it can respond fast any suggestions? I figure X86/64 is important for Movidius.

Re: Fully functional Bipedal social Robot.
Conundrum, Thu Sept 07 2017, 03:46PM

Yes, it needs x86-64 running Ubuntu 16.06LTS
Ideally you want genuine Intel but it may work with a 64 bit AMD (ie my Phenom quad core) depending on how specific the system requirements are.

see

Re: Fully functional Bipedal social Robot.
Hazmatt_(The Underdog), Fri Sept 08 2017, 03:38AM

I think mood is fairly easy to implement also. Mood would be an algorithm that tracks the scoring of the input and averages over time, it can be built like a PID where it can take a long time to recover from a lot of negative input, or it can snap back and have overshoots causing mood swings, which could be hilarious.

The more negative the input average, say a downward trending score can cause the weight to shift to more and more negative replies, likewise with compliments.

We are all basically feedback driven systems, and how elastic we are to input somewhat determines our outwardly mood and how long we sustain that mood and how intense the mood is, e.g. stress, anger, depression, joy.


In thinking about it, if you had a mood function that is linear F(x) = mx +b, then the robot would be very even in responses,
but if you used a cubic function it could go into mania or deep depression, likewise with a step function it would be either hyper or dead....hahahah.

It's a funny thought, using control systems to profile a person's personality profile. Florida must have the highest concentration of "bang bang" type people.. hahahahah.

Re: Fully functional Bipedal social Robot.
Chris Cristini, Mon Sept 11 2017, 11:53PM

Finally got 10 9g servo's, PWM half bridge controllers and an I2C servo controller on the way to finish its head and acquired some wiper motors from a parts car for some of the heavier duty stuff.

Next will be more 10KG and 20KG servo's as well as a Udoo x86 then I may order movidius or something that could substitute for a HNN.

LOL big bang types. It may be a fun part of this project programming AI but maybe set up boundaries and basic instruction to let it learn on its own?

Re: Fully functional Bipedal social Robot.
Chris Cristini, Mon Sept 18 2017, 12:35AM

Well I have 10 servos stuffed in the head I can't wait for I2c controllers to come I want to see more than 4 at a time move so far that's all my battery can handle.

Here is the ears
And the eye lids

For now after its lips move by servo I can't move forward on the head until I figure out how to make eyes.
As for the arms and chest I am trying to figure out gear motors I think wiper motors are to much for the arms maybe legs.

Re: Fully functional Bipedal social Robot.
Conundrum, Wed Sept 20 2017, 08:26PM

More power is better than not enough. Also wiper motors have lots of torque but may be worth adding current feedback in case of a stall/etc.
I looked into using a dual mode motor for small and large movements, ie a stepper mechanically in parallel with the wiper motor. When unpowered it can also be regenerative.

Re: Fully functional Bipedal social Robot.
Chris Cristini, Thu Sept 21 2017, 02:06AM


The whole regenerative idea is interesting? Also it arms will just move around really maybe lift a 16oz bottle or something the power will be more directed towards legs for mobility.

As for eyes I am thinking of using two pi zero Ws and the cameras with Open CV for distance measurement and object/face tracking.

Anyone have any experience with Open CV?

Re: Fully functional Bipedal social Robot.
Conundrum, Thu Sept 21 2017, 06:46AM

I have a NoIR/W here which is probably going to get used for my superconductor annealing project.
Turns out that at >300C hot objects light up like a nova in the IR spectrum even with cheap plastic lenses.
Interesting note, if you want to improve image quality find an old SLR camera and retrofit the NoIR. The old glass lenses were very robust and quite efficient at gathering light.

Re: Fully functional Bipedal social Robot.
Chris Cristini, Sat Oct 14 2017, 10:49PM

Well after a ton of research while waiting for Funds/Parts I think The PI Cluster hat would be good.
I am not sure if X5 RPI3/Cluster Hat and 20 RPI Zero W would be overkill or not enough and at 5A The Battery setup is going to be difficult its bad enough its uses so many servos.
Not to mention the Udoo X86 and HDD stuff its going to suck figuring out Heat dissipation. So much money will be wasted if this turns in to another failed project.

Re: Fully functional Bipedal social Robot.
Conundrum, Sun Oct 15 2017, 06:32AM

OK, thanks!
I have sourced (possibly) some faulty Zero W's with bad HDMI/Wifi/etc ICs so
should be able to run through a load and sort them for future use.
16GB card isn't that expensive and for my purposes read speed is more important.
Re. eyes. Maybe 3's would be better as more cores and higher clock speed.
BCMx87

Re: Fully functional Bipedal social Robot.
Chris Cristini, Sun Oct 15 2017, 12:23PM


Hmm I will have to consider RPI3 X2 for the eyes after all more power is better when it comes to Computing this thing is going to have more RAM than my Asus ROG Laptop.

Re: Fully functional Bipedal social Robot.
Conundrum, Mon Oct 16 2017, 04:07AM

More RAM is better.
I considered buying a job lot of GT 710 cards (low end 2GB) then overclocking them with my nice sparkling new 25F16 programmer purchased by SWMBO for a different purpose (cough hacking digital picture frames for spook season /cough)
These typically use a fairly standard layout and Nvidia even provide an unlocked FW on some high end cards with the advice to ensure external cooling is provided and if needed recycling fans from older cards.
Possibly an alternative is initially set up the AI core on a huge system to work on the BCM chipset the RPi uses to reduce overheads.
Then use 16GB UHS-1 cards to preload learning data on the fly having multiple cores running in parallel synchronized using the system clocks and linked at full HDMI speeds using that interface.
This is feasible due to the way HDMI works, as long as sync is valid you have literally 6 data lines at >300 MHz to play with.

I also tried to get the BCM datasheet but the problem is that pesky NDA.
The graphics "core" has some encoding so purchasing an MPEG4 key might be needed then feed that back into the system to unlock advanced features.
Incidentally discovered that some uSD cards can be overclocked by reading back the serial on the back then (possibly) sending a command back over the bus with this attached to get into service menu.
Its handy to access advanced features so that wear leveling can be gauged as have a failing 256GB here.

Re: Fully functional Bipedal social Robot.
Chris Cristini, Mon Oct 16 2017, 11:26AM

Oh so you mean build an external supercomputer and preload to the robot that's genius :) so less internal mess I love it. This also means more power due to no size limitations. How ever there could still be a small cluster on board for robot vision and DL and communication back and fourth. And 6 data lines at 300Mhz is quite fast compared. Thank you for your wonderful input.

Another thing is I need to start making YouTube videos where I use my voice and show my face that seems to get the views and YouTube and patreon seem to work hand and hand.
So I made this abomination with TTS lol I also need to get better at grammar and being social in general. Here is CNC Micros Patreon so you all can get a laugh.

And FPGA?
And some good reading.

Now with the research I have done today I have learned it is not necessary to make a cluster with high end cards so I am thinking of two 1080ti and some good Intel hardware. The price hurts.

Re: Fully functional Bipedal social Robot.
Conundrum, Tue Oct 17 2017, 05:49AM

Yeah, the folks at work think I am crazy heh heh..

To be fair this approach was suggested by Turing himself, back in the day.
IIRC "logarithm tables" used to be calculated by roomfuls of human computers by hand using slide rules and math.
He actually suggested a variant of this method to break codes, where you started with the Short Weather Cipher as a crib then stored the complex variables elsewhere and just did the needed calculations, once the wheel combination had been computed it was fed back into the system and used to obtain plaintext.
(google "solving of Enigma")

I looked into getting a bulk discount from pimoroni and they seemed very interested.
Also Arcadia over here have lots of low end GT710 cards which can be modified quite simply.

Re: Fully functional Bipedal social Robot.
Chris Cristini, Wed Oct 18 2017, 01:22AM

Well I am going to stop disappointing my self with costs yikes. I will see if I can get the eyes done and move forward on the hardware I think I am going to use a clear resin With the half sphere silicone molds on the way I received some of these WS2812 Led Rings I am going to add and I still need to order the EYE cameras to finish up then its back to figuring out arm servos I may use cheap screw gun Motors/Gearbox and POTs for now I have these PWM motor drivers already. I just started a Kick starter campaign for this awaiting approval.

Re: Fully functional Bipedal social Robot.
Conundrum, Wed Oct 18 2017, 03:34AM

Have used WS2812s before, don't forget the input resistor!!
Re. 1080Ti, a lot of "broken" cards can be trivially repaired using simple reflow of affected memory chips.
I think when the miners use them often they run hotter than normal so even marginal parts fail under these conditions.

Re: Fully functional Bipedal social Robot.
Chris Cristini, Wed Oct 18 2017, 08:01PM


Thank you for the tip on the LEDs. It turns out its not a Kickstarter ready project? OK they say its not complete enough.
What do you think of a pair of GTX 690s I think it would be an alright choice If I want multiple GPUs at a low cost while having DDR5 and a ton of cuda cores another benefit is 4 GPUs per cheap X16 SLI Motherboard and its not like I am doing human genome research. I am still very new to research regarding DL so try not to laugh to hard lol

I wonder?

I like your idea of used miner equipment I also wish riser cards they use could be used for DL I seen kits that allow 6 Video cards per MB but that gives up lanes and would slow stuff to a RPI level and waist tons of energy I hope to achieve my goals for less than 2KW I figure decent OPEN CV recognition can be achieved with a PI3 and voice recognition on small embedded systems this may be over kill? but for $1000 or so can make a pretty bad a$$ computer with older hardware.

Re: Fully functional Bipedal social Robot.
hen918, Wed Oct 18 2017, 09:08PM

For parallel processing tasks you don't need a very high bandwidth from PC to GPU. A single lane would be enough.

Re: Fully functional Bipedal social Robot.
Chris Cristini, Thu Oct 19 2017, 05:21PM


Ah yes I am understanding more and more and reading this will help make a decision before spending the money.

Re: Fully functional Bipedal social Robot.
Conundrum, Fri Oct 20 2017, 05:58AM

Measure twice, cut once and all that.

My Litz wire showed up, have you considered using tinsel wire for some of the low power interconnects?
I'm pretty sure thats what they used for some of the industrial robots where the wrist is fully mobile.

Re: Fully functional Bipedal social Robot.
Chris Cristini, Fri Oct 20 2017, 12:01PM


Tinsel wire? That's a good idea. I have worked with tensel wire at Whelen engineering hooking up a spray booth arm it was weird cable because it had some weight to it but flexed more like a rope. I could source tons of it from phone cable as twisted pair that could be good if I actually decided to go with small switches in the fingers to simulate touch?

Re: Fully functional Bipedal social Robot.
Hazmatt_(The Underdog), Fri Oct 20 2017, 04:17PM

You'd probably get better touch response from load cells or flexible resistors over switches. Switches are not going to give you much pressure feedback, and depending on what switch you use, grip may still be loose enough to drop an object.

Re: Fully functional Bipedal social Robot.
Chris Cristini, Fri Oct 20 2017, 04:44PM



You mean something like this? that's far better than simple switches I wonder if this robot had toes these can be used to help with upright walking? I believe we use feeling in are toes for walking

Re: Fully functional Bipedal social Robot.
Conundrum, Sun Oct 22 2017, 06:35AM

Just a note, make sure you have good quality connectors for it. I think phone cables use displacement connectors as this does not stress the wire much.
Also they can't take a lot of current (50mA IIRC)

Re: Fully functional Bipedal social Robot.
Hazmatt_(The Underdog), Sun Oct 22 2017, 04:32PM

Yea a flexible resistor is perfect.

I don't see a tactile switch being adequate for grip because it will snap-over before you have enough pressure on say a can of soda, and the can will just slip out even with a hand closed.

Re: Fully functional Bipedal social Robot.
Chris Cristini, Sun Oct 22 2017, 09:18PM


Would direct solder joints instead of a Connector work well I have almost no experience with Phone cord.


The whole switch idea was just a cheap way of some feed back But I did not think of a real world solution. Thank you!!! I would not have been able to figure out what I need to Do with out the help of this forum!! I wonder why I have ever used any other forum?

Does anyone have any Idea of how to make a good Kickstarter As you all know I have a hard time making a decent quality post Here is a link to the preview Kickstarter said it is not complete enough But I misunderstood they meant the campaign not the robot it self I have no clue how to make good videos or anything social for that mater. Another thing is most Kickstarter campaigns have a team of people and a fully functional prototype. This campaign will require a ton more to get any funding.

Re: Fully functional Bipedal social Robot.
Chris Cristini, Thu Nov 09 2017, 05:51PM

What are the chances of re purposing A CPU for ASIC? Well after more research on that I think we need an open source High performance solution over GPU. GPUs are so power hungry and for ASIC its to expensive eh I am disappointed at the market for AI solutions.

Re: Fully functional Bipedal social Robot.
Chris Cristini, Sat Dec 02 2017, 05:36PM

So on the subject of wires my new job is at Whitney Blake building wires and learning about the trade so I may ask if I can have scraps. They work with Litz, twisted pair and many other types and gauges I am going to soak up so much overtime to get this project going again still stuck on servo selection for arms.

Re: Fully functional Bipedal social Robot.
Conundrum, Wed Jan 17 2018, 07:27AM

Good luck!
If its any help I made some wire myself using the good old "DIY Litz" method.
For those not familiar with it you get 12 or more identical lengths of 30ga enameled wire and twist it under gentle tension with a slow rotation.
If done right the resulting flexible rope is highly durable and far superior to anything normally available.
The same method is used in a lot of headphone cables and requires thorough cleaning of each strand for a solid joint.

EDIT: Despite a minor setback I acquired several quite high end graphics cards.
Its possible to replace RAM on these if you are particularly skilled, but a side effect is the need for some sort of imaging system to identify quality of the resultant BGA joints.
Also relevant is that a lot of early ones were underclocked for heat reasons, this can be fixed trivially and with better cooling and replacement of the horrible thermal pads can be capable of 1/10 the performance of a Titan X at the cost of significantly shortening operational lifetime.

Re: Fully functional Bipedal social Robot.
Chris Cristini, Sun Jan 28 2018, 10:21PM

Ah I'm stuck on a big project working with 30ga 30-40 strand holy shit but 60-80 hrs a week takes all my time. I will be back on it soon.

Good luck with BGA :)

Re: Fully functional Bipedal social Robot.
Conundrum, Tue Jan 30 2018, 07:00AM

Yeah, its a steep learning curve but doable with the right kit.
Hint: if you are using BGA bigger than maybe 8 balls get the board made professionally. Not only will it avoid using dangerous chemicals but it can be tested before the chip(s) get fitted.
A good protoboard setup for short term use only is one with vias and tiny holes so the solder flows correctly.
Solder from the back one pin at a time and if you do it right the chip normally experiences far less stress than even a single conventional reflow cycle. I learned this tip while working with flaky graphics cards!
EDIT: Has some 63/37 balls here but they do need quite careful placing.
I believe that some early chips preplated the pads ONLY with 50um In so that the ball sticks initially, then reflow correctly melts it.
Core of the ball is different than the outside for a reason

Re: Fully functional Bipedal social Robot.
Chris Cristini, Sun Sept 09 2018, 11:32PM

Ugh all of the research and time working I haven't been able to do any mechanical work on this thing I hope ASIC AI comes a little further do to its simplicity and less of an instruction set. And an added bonus is the power consumption.

Conundrum have you done anything with your PI Zeros. it would be interesting to hear about after all this time.

Re: Fully functional Bipedal social Robot.
Conundrum, Mon Sept 10 2018, 07:24PM

Still trying.
I did look into the Movidius mPCIe cards (intended for industrial use) but they may or may not work on laptop.
It has to be at least a quad core with 8GB RAM (doable), running Ubuntu >16.04 for the special inference software and API to run.
Depending on the CPU used, ideally it needs to be low power but in principle an AMD Phenom 2 notebook chip *might* work underclocked though it would be a bodge.
There are SBCs optimized for this system but they are mighty expensive.

-Andre

Re: Fully functional Bipedal social Robot.
Chris Cristini, Thu Sept 20 2018, 05:32PM

Yea that whole platform is too expensive as of now. I almost want to buy a cheap mining ASIC from Ebay and experiment with using it for AI. Honesty it is for crunching numbers right? Well here it is

Re: Fully functional Bipedal social Robot.
hen918, Thu Sept 20 2018, 05:56PM


You will find that a normal mining asic is useless for anything other than bruteforcing SHA256, which is what it is designed for. The asic mentioned in the article is a special one like the Movidius that just happens to be designed by a company that originally specialised in mining asics.

Re: Fully functional Bipedal social Robot.
Chris Cristini, Thu Sept 20 2018, 09:54PM

Ah thank you. hen918

Re: Fully functional Bipedal social Robot.
Conundrum, Sat Sept 22 2018, 07:06AM

Actually its not completely useless. I have a possible application for this.
Turns out the codes used on something else are structurally similar and a powerful graphics card can translate them into an SHA256 problem sort of like a co-processor then write out a "rainbow table" that allows the standalone unit to run in some modes (eg iris recognition) using pre-coded pattern written earlier where accuracy only has to be relative as its for a prop not serious security. Thats what the PIN pad is for

Its as others have said a bit like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut but if you have lemons then you have to make lemonade.

EDIT: Useful tip. If you have a really broken graphics card get a £10 IR thermometer and run the card for a few seconds with minimal heatsink just on the GPU.
If you do it right then you may be able to find a "hot spot" or sometimes "cold spot where the bad RAM is, change that chip and all should be well.
This assumes that the problem is indeed bad RAM and not just crappy solder ballache on the core or bad interconnects.
Also works incidentally on PS3's with similar problems.

Dead PS3s can be a good source for some hard-to-find parts FWIW.