Our goal is to automatically transfer motions created using traditional animation software to robotic characters while avoiding such artifacts. To this end, we develop an optimization-based, dynamics-aware motion retargeting system that adjusts an input motion such that visually salient low-frequency, large amplitude vibrations are suppressed.
Read the original disney research paper at https://la.disneyresearch.com/publication/publication-process-vibration-minimizing-motion-retargeting-for-robotic-characters/.
Hey, gang! Happy International Women’s day. On my birthday women celebrate around the world. That never gets old. Something something my ego.
Jin is down with seasonal allergies/mild death and we don’t have our amazing interns any more, so this week has been a little rough.
New! ELEC-0134 Sir Ramps-a-lot Dark Knight
We use the sir-ramps-a-lot board so that our Mega/RAMPs combo can easily control external drivers. Some of the drivers we purchased decided to be contentious and are designed with all their signals reversed, so we needed a sir-ramps-a-lot that was ALSO reversed. Anyways, here it is!
The inverse and forward kinematics are both working great, which means you can move it either way and switch between the two as you see fit. Making the IK and FK code work took me three whole days of agony, so there’s not much progress in other areas this week.
Sixi Robot Rendering
This is pretty close to our vision for the robot. We’ve had it assembled and we’ve even got it moving, but I’m not ready to show it to the world just yet. It’s coming together! I would love to show you some action shots we’ve taken… but these PR things have to be handled just right, you know what I mean? Patience is a virtue.
Next
Now the challenge is to program waypoints and paths (all the beziers!) to build higher-level applications for the arm. Meanwhile Jin is stress testing the cycloid gearboxes and coming up with new ways to make them even better-er.
Cool! So subscribe to this blog or our Youtube channel OR our Instagram for all the latest and I will see you next time!
Now that the DaGhizmo pen holder is standard I’ve been playing around with drawing on glass. Check it out! I used a pink EXPO Brightstick.
If you’re feeling a little left out because you have an older pen holder made of acrylic or wood, fear not! We have your new pen holder ready.
Sixi Robot knolling
We took the robot apart after some motion testing to inspect the hidden parts. We want to be certain everything inside is good. Turns out the shaft couplers were giving us grief (again). Our next version of the collars won’t even have a split on one side. Instead they’ll be friction fit with a set screw that goes into a hole on the side of each tube.
Sixi Robot electronics enclosure
We have had great fun with our electronics enclosure. I’ve only tried to make one enclosures before. We used an off the shelf enclosure that has nubs in the bottom. The idea is to design a plate that has one set of holes for the electronics and one set of holes that match a few of the nubs. Even when we followed the Original Equipment Manufacturer’s (OEM) data sheet, we still couldn’t get our laser cut plate to line up with the nubs. That left everyone here scratching their heads.
The box hole patternmaking sure parts fit in the box
Next
Jacob and Scott have finished their internship with us. 😭 With luck we can have them back over spring break or the summer. I say with luck and what I mean is “with luck the Sixi is done”. There’s already so much to do here but that is where I want to delegate them, working on the new bleeding edge of technology with the new hotness.
I would write more but I have to get back to it! There’s firmware to update for the Sixi and components to reassemble. Subscribe to my channels and buy some of the good stuff so we can keep being awesome, k? K. Peace out.
Hey, gang! Here is what we worked on in the last week, where we are heading next, and how you can join us.
Makelangelo Update Released!
Makelangelo Software v7.20.1 and Makelangelo firmware v9.0.0 are out now. This is a major change to the firmware which rewrites all the logic for planning movement, especially with acceleration and deceleration. If you upgrade one then you must upgrade both. We have written a guide to help you with updating the Makelangelo firmware that should make this easy for you.
One of the side effects is that the old and busted steps/min values have been replaced with new hotness mm/s and mm/s/s. I am getting good drawing results with top speed=90mm/s, drawing speed=60mm/s, and acceleration=300mm/s/s. See for yourself.
Makelangelo 5 at Science World Vancouver, Feb 20, 2019
Wednesday the power was out for a scheduled electrical upgrade and we used the time at Vancouver’s Telus World of Science to take some better photographs and video. I hope that with this I can finally make a presentation pitch video that does the machine sweet vengeful justice.
Fun fact: A large sheet of acrylic has enough static cling and surface tension to hold an A0 sheet of paper without tape.
Makelangelo on a white board
I find that the Makelangelo suction cups work great on glass …and not so great on a class room white board. I tasked Jacob with designing a new system and he went through several rapid prototype iterations.
In house we’ve moved on a few versions from what you just saw and have an even better design. When it’s ready we’ll offer it in the store and on Thingiverse.
I should also mention Scott has been doing a great job of manufacturing Makelangelos and documenting process. I don’t mention enough how good he’s doing (very!) at a job some people would look down on. Documentation is hard, yo! He’s even inventing better ways to make the machines faster with less futzing.
Sixi motors arrived
Jin was taking some much earned time off this week, during which time the motors and the power supply we ordered finally arrived. As I write this he’s doing electrical tests and torque tests and making sure that everything is to spec.
Meanwhile, on the other side of town,
In anticipation of our new CNC machine arriving in ~6 weeks I’ve been taking night classes to learn how to be a better machinist. Here’s a funny from my last session:
Manners really seal the deal.
Next
The next week is Jacob & Scott’s last week of internship. Pizza party? Pizza party. If everything goes well with the testing we should be installing the new motors into Sixi this week. I can wait, but I don’t want to… 😭
You can use this file to build your own copy of the robot arm. Put
that 3D printer you bought to use – Make it your own! Share your
creation with others! That’s what open source is about. If you build
one we would love to share it with others. I am actively seeking
talent… show me what you got.
As always, follow our daily progress on our Instagram or see our older stuff on Youtube.
You can do us a huge favor by watching just 2 minutes of video on our Youtube channel. We have 44k subscribers on IG and we need 100k minutes watched to monetize our channel. If you all watch 2 minutes of video that’s 88k minutes done, finito, in the bank, sayanora. So Like, Share, Subscribe! We thank you.
Lastly, thank you for your likes, subscribes, comments, and
purchases. You keep the lights on and the mood high so we can keep
working on awesome things that will help the planet.
Hey, gang! Here is what we worked on in the last week, where we are heading next, and how you can join us.
The business of making
The CNC machine has been ordered and everything is now in place – the Vending Machine is gone to make room and electrical in the workshop has been upgraded in preparation. I asked for the invoice two days ago and have yet to receive it /_/
恭喜發財! gōng xǐ fā cái! Or in other words, we are still waiting on parts to arrive from our suppliers. My understanding is that most of china takes a week off and goes home, much like western xmas/new years.
Also! Somehow last week’s summary was left as a draft all week. It has been posted. Oops.
Makelangelo v7.20.0
I have spent most of the last week upgrading the Makelangelo firmware on Github. Previous all speed control was in a mysterious “steps per second” and acceleration was … well, I was faking something that worked good enough. Because MF runs on all our robots, I tried to use it for the Sixi arm and discovered that the fake acceleration was no longer good enough. It has now been much improved! Steps per second has been replaced with mm/s and mm/s/s. Acceleration is much more sane. The changes can be installed on any existing Makelangelo 5 robot. (Maybe a v3? Someone try it and let me know!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TN5tKVSzpnA
And then just a few hours later I had it solved:
The Makelangelo Software has also been improved to match. I’ve opened and closed at least a dozen bugs this week. Speaking of which! I have finally found a great technique to fill in solid regions of closed shapes. The secret is to use the Eggbot Inkscape plugin from our friends at Evil Mad Scientist Labs. Check this Spongebob, which my nephew says is 💯.
The code for the Makelangelo is also used in other robots like the Stewart Platform. (The firmware is a bit like the One Ring, it rules them all.
Sixi
The only word on the Sixi this week is that Jin’s math has calculated the estimated speed of the robot. At the shoulder we expect, under ideal conditions, to sweep the work area while carrying the payload in about three seconds. So I guess we’re Hangin’ Tough. Meanwhile Jin has been deep into designing the elbow, the shoulder, and the base.
Next
Next week, assuming there are no bug reports on Github, I will be releasing the updated Makelangelo firmware and Makelangelo software for everyone. You can get it now and try it yourself here for firmware and here for software. Note these are the raw files for programmers, so some massaging will be needed.
You can use this file to build your own copy of the robot arm. Put that 3D printer you bought to use – Make it your own! Share your creation with others! That’s what open source is about. If you build one we would love to share it with others. I am actively seeking talent… show me what you got.
As always, follow our daily progress on our Instagram or see our older stuff on Youtube.
Lastly, thank you for your likes, subscribes, comments, and purchases. You keep the lights on and the mood high so we can keep working on awesome things that will help the planet. Special thanks this week to EMSL and to James Bruton for his tips on Youtube filming
