Welcome!

The Head contains 25 Servo motors in the following locations:

1. Eyebrows

2. Eyelids

3. Eyes

4. Lips

5. Mought & Jaw

6. neck

all servo engines are controlled using PWM pulses.

- In order to control the Servo motors a microController (Microchip's PIC18F6390) was used, providing the following tasks:

• • Communications control (in & out of the entire system).

  • PWM - Angles (degrees) conversion.

  • Facial expressions Algorithms.

  • Timing requirements (for PWM pulse creation).

  • Start-up  & periodically tests (check COM, Voltages, Sanity check, Checksum on data packets).

In order to convey an emotion - the microController receives ordes from PC, using an operational tool, which I wrote in C#, 

sending data packets (in a correct form which is described later on), controlling a single \ multiple servo engines at a time

moving across 0 - 180 degrees (or  -90 - +90 degrees, depends on your calibrations start-up point).

Here's a little academic review of other similar projects from universities around the globe:

• 1. FLOBI - beifield univ, Germany, featuring:

     1. • • • • • 1. 18 DOF (degrees of freedom, AKA servo engines).

                  2. includes eye cameras

                  3. contains team of 6 Engineers, researchers, faculty memebers.

                  4. Bulit to avoid "uncanny valley".

• 1. ICUB - Lisbon univ, Portugal, featuring:

     1. • • • • • 1. special children interactions design.

                  2. 6 DOF

                  3. in progress since 2006 (esimated price - several hundred K$)

• 1. WE-4RII - waseda univ, japan, featuring:

     1. • • • • • 1. 22 facial DOF (contains more for entire body functionality)

                  2. contains eye cameras, with focus controll

                  3. contains multi-level expressions algorithms.

                  4. budget set to  - several hundred K$.

                  5. developing as joint venture with ARTIS labs in Italy.

                  6. contains complex mechanics.

Now lets discuss how the Perlins Robot is in scale of the above amazing robots:

• • Featuring 25 DOF - 25 servo engines throughout the Head, enabling the creation of a wide array of expressions.

  • hardware was developed with the following specifications & insights:

    • 1. Two seperate voltage regulators (one for current up to 0.5 A, for uController),(one for Servo engines, up to 7A).

      2. External Crystal for uController accuracy (needed for PWM creations).

      3. Opto-couplars, to buffer between low power consumption (uController), and high power consumption (Servo Engines).

      4. conductors & wires gauge able to sustain high Current consumption.

      5. Flash programmable 64 pin microProccessor, with 51 I\O ports (which I turned into PWM outputs, using Software).

  • Featuring a very low budget (overall cost), and a task force of 1 ambitious Student (Me).

  • Firmware feature multiple modules ( Test module, Manager module, Communications module, Expressions module, PWM module).

  • C# interactive user friendly GUI tool, to speed up further follow-up projects & very helpful for exhibitions .

  • Facial skin is an elastic poly-Silicon , Servo engines replaceable, Dimentions: 21.6 x 13.97 x 20.3 cm.

  • Project was created with the Amazing help of Josh grey CEO of Customent Solutions company.

  • Self designed Data packet protocol between PC & microController (62 Bytes per packet, to control 25 servo engines)

the following shows the vast amount of work invested in the hardware of project:

The following video show Perlins abilities: