I spent this week once again finding Robotic heads. I found a few more interesting models. Here are a few examples

My objective this week was to do some research and find a robotic head neck system. We are planning on mimicking a robotic head neck system that already exists and making a few changes to it so that it fulfills our criteria. The following are a few of the robotic heads that I found:

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  David Ng has a company in Hong Kong, which is now making android heads for sale to the public. The head is completely customized to pictures the customer sends in using 3D Studio Max. The skulls are cut with a laser cutter. The skin is silicone and it even has facial muscles (it can smile and frown). The eyes move too.  
  

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  Here is another head project, which YFX Studios has done for the University of California at San Diego (UCSD). It looks real too. This head has 9 DOF.    They are using the firefly digital cameras from Point Grey Research in Vancouver, BC. for eyes.
  

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  Fumio Hara of the Science University of Tokyo has built a robotic head of a Japanese woman, which is controlled by 24 hydraulic cylinders, which can change its facial expression to one of six common human expressions.  It took Hara 10 million yen and three years' work with the help of his unpaid students to build Roberta. Thiw was clearly too expensive for us.
  

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  Hossein Mobahi from the Azad University, Tehran-South Campus, Tehran, Iran has developed an animatronic face. The face is comprised of eight degrees of freedom. Its controllable features are eyes, eyebrows, jaw and neck.  Aryan's brain enables it to autonomously detect human face or hands and to track them. Aryan can express its emotion in his face, according to its perceived visual stimulation. The brain software runs on a standard PC with a 200MHz Intel Pentium Processor and under Linux OS.   
  

WEEK4
I spent this week once again finding Robotic heads. I found a few more interesting models. Here are a few examples:

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  They are building an android head at Android World Inc. They have sculpted Valerie's head out of oil-based clay and cast our molds in Ultracal30. The face will be made from foam latex and will have cables embedded in it so that face muscles can be operated from inside the head with RC-type servos.  They plan to offer components of the head or the full head as a kit for robotics laboratories to use as an AI teaching tool.     Below is the head with the eyes mounted in it.  It also has the teeth mounted in the jaws and the lower jaw hinged to the upper jaw.  They have the molds for the face and head completed.
  

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  The Robot Group of Austin Texas has a head project, which they call the Babbling Head. Brooks Coleman, Alex Iles, and Bill Craig constructed it. The eyeballs are hammered silver with LED lights illuminating the iris centers. The eyeballs are also servo controlled and capable of rolling. The neck and the lips are made of soft plastic for mobility. The lips are molded black silicon and the neck pipe piece is a dryer vent pipe. This robot is fitted with an exhibit controller board that operates a series of servo motors that move the lips, eyeballs and neck areas. A sound synthesizer provides the computer voice simulated speech that brings the Babbling Robot Head to life.
  

WEEK5

It is possible to build a computer-driven, life-size, android robot head for cost of materials of about $600.00. The android head has two color video-camera eyes with the video going both into a window on the PC and into an image processing Java application. The robot has six servo motors controlling: (1) base of the head spins, (2,3) each eye moves left/right, (4) both eyes move up/down, (5,6) each eye-lid opens/closes. All servo motors are controlled through a Java application. The user supplies the computer (PC). The head is the most difficult part to find. It was found at a mannequin services shop. It is made of fiberglass. Some things to consider when choosing a head are that the space behind the eye openings has enough room for the moving Eye-Bracket. The width of head must accommodate both eye-cams mounted on a bracket. Also of consideration is to ensure the eye bracket can be removed with the rest of the Cranium Chassis.