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Technion Israel Institute of Technology
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  • The Robotic head project (initiated on 2011 winter semester) is intended to explore the human expressions & facial emotions controlled by the muscles it interacts with, along with computerized environment, enabling the usage of Servo motors to mimic muscles movements.
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  • Technion's Robotic head Project - Perlins

      • Hebrew translation stands for: Computer controlled expressionable Robotic Head

        The Robotic head project (initiated on 2011 winter semester) is intended to explore the human expressions & facial emotions controlled by the muscles it interacts with, along with computerized environment, enabling the usage of Servo motors to mimic muscles movemets

        The Robotic head project was:
        Designed and performed by: UG student, Mr. Roee hershko,
        supervised by Robotic's lab cheif engineer, Mr. Kobi Kohai
        The project was successfully finished at March 2012.

        The following describes the project:
        - Imagine you can control a Robotic head using 25 Servo motors throughout the head, which emotions can you conjure?

  • Robot expression

  • 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:

    • FLOBI - beifield univ, Germany, featuring:

    • 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".

    • ICUB - Lisbon univ, Portugal, featuring:

    • 1. special children interactions design.
      2. 6 DOF
      3. in progress since 2006 (esimated price - several
          hundred K$)

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

    • 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.

  • Perlins Robot

    • 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