[Tony Ellis]

The ALTAIR Robot Chronicles [Part 1]

ALTAIR EZ:1 - Pouring a drink and serving



Tony

[Freddy]

Very good - I liked the "Waiting for last drops in particular" ! 

[Korrelan]

Cool... can it hold a Rum bottle?

 

[Art]

Nice to see you once again Tony!! Maybe you should change his name to "Maxwell".
In America we have Maxwell House Coffee -"Good to the last drop" 

[8pla.net]

Now, that is the kind of robot, I like !   

[Tony Ellis]

Thanks everyone for the kind words.

The ALTAIR Robot Chronicles [Part 2] - Take photo and analyse - Face Recognition and 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 interaction.



The ALTAIR robots Human vision Sub-system incorporates 10 algorithms of the OKAO(TM) Vision Image Sensing Technology 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.

Tony

[Art]

Tony, you have programmed some amazing abilities for your ALTAIR. Very impressive to say the least!

What future plans or directions do you have for the ALTAIR?

[Tony Ellis]

Hi Art, my dream is to one day make the ALTAIR robots commercial, but that will need some investment so at this point I am continually improving the tech to a point where the robots are actually useful and consumers will want to own them.

The EZ:1 recently met Softbanks Pepper robot which was very interesting!



Tony

[Art]

That must have been an interesting meeting! How does Altair's mobility (speed, stability, directional changes, etc.) compare to Pepper's?

Thanks!

[Tony Ellis]

Art, It was strange when the film crew brought the Pepper to our studio the guy controlling it was moving it manually (by hand) to filming positions. Peppers top half moves very smoothly and is very impressive, although it took some pre-programming before it did anything. The ALTAIR was working mostly by itself, I had pre-trained Peppers image into the ALTAIR via photos so he recognised the Pepper robot and did a welcome routine. The film crew (and Pepper operator) were impressed with the ALTAIR functionality.

Tony

[Tony Ellis]

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

This video shows the EZ:1 Robot giving a tour of his sensors and what they do.



For Robots to make sense of their World and environment they need complex sensors with vision being the most important.



Tony

[Art]

Tony,

What are those long devices on each forearm that resemble hydraulic cylinders? I didn't think ALTAIR used hydraulics but might it be for stabilization and range limitation of the forearms?

Thanks for your time.

[Tony Ellis]

Art, they are linear actuators see

http://www.active-robots.com/actuator-l12-50-100-12-p

They have good torque but are noisy compared to the rest of the arms motors.

Tony

[Art]

It was difficult for me to tell what they were from the photo but those look pretty nice.

I suppose that type of actuator would be more suited / practical than plain servos or mini motor configurations.

Interesting pieces of equipment. Is 2" (50 mm) enough throw for most of its purposes?

[Tony Ellis]

Art, I showed the wrong actuator type the ones I use have 150mm travel.

Tony