My Advanced Realistic Humanoid Robots Project

[artbyrobot]

Well done OP.

I'm impressed how you convinced so many on this thread that you are actually serious. My hat is off to you in investing as much time as you have creating complete pieces of junk to aid in your ploy.

Dedication to such a lofty goal as fooling smart folk here is something to be applauded. I particular like how you throw in the "I'm brilliant", "I invented this" etc etc. Adds fuel to the fire making people want to point out the madness of your work, while not realizing you are just playing them. Well done!

Both my sons, mechanical engineers, were rolling around in laughter that folk actually thought you were serious with the various things you've written and images/videos you have posted. It is not easy to act like a fool with delusions of grandeur, excellent! Look forward to more of your excellent acting - as has been written before, laughter is the best medicine.

cheers,
george.

You talk a big game well we'll see who's laughing when my robot is out mowing my lawn whille you use your push lawnmower getting sunburn.

[georges80]

Excellent, not easy to maintain the act. Quite a professional performance. I'll let you create more material and sit back and enjoy.

cheers,
george.

[artbyrobot]

some people are so out of touch with reality and delusional that they think a world class robotics project done for 10 years is not serious effort shown to build a robot.  Foolish take.  Just blind.

[georges80]

Love it, thanks for your diligence in creating such a ploy. True dedication. You are a master at your craft.

cheers,
george.

[artbyrobot]

if you are going to fling around baseless false accusations, then at the very least provide us with some evidence to support your wild conspiracy theories.  Until then, we will happily disregard your folly and assume you are yourself just trolling this board and this thread.

[Analog Kid]

You, mon ami, have provided ample evidence of the shittiness of your robotics efforts.

As in the expression "enough rope to hang yourself".

[artbyrobot]

have provided ample evidence of the shittiness of your robotics efforts.

When you say the efforts were "shitty" you define this as all parts must be machined by 6 figure machines to sub 1/1000th mm accuracy and in titanium.  Therefore, your ability to even define what "shitty" is amongst all of us makers and hobbyists becomes completely irrelevant and absurd.  This means your opinion here is null and void and has no relevance to the subject matter whatsoever. 

That having been said, my efforts appearing "shitty" by your completely unrealistic and overpriced ridiculous standards has absolutely nothing to do with the above poster's claims that my project is so bad that it cannot be done in earnest with the intent to succeed and must therefore be literally me just spinning wheels for no reason other than to see if anybody will take me seriously as a attempt to amuse myself.  Such a wild conspiracy theory is absurd to me.  There are much lower hanging fruit ways one can try to troll someone else.  To claim my whole project is not done in earnest with intent to succeed despite me spending thousands of dollars on it, building a whole website for it and spending 10 years learning every related field makes no logical sense at all.  Even if my efforts are "shitty" compared to your elitist smug definition of what qualifies as acceptable according to NASA standards, that does not mean I'm not doing my best with the tools I have available to me because I am.  And that's what matters really - that I give it my all and never give up.

[artbyrobot]

I just ran a test of the second turn in place winching pulley and ran into several problems. First I noticed my main lines turning the motor were not the full 27"+ which I thought they were but just remeasured and found they weren't. My bad. So I have to rewind those to fix that. Next, I noticed that just as we depart from the motor output shaft we experience mechanical advantage with each downgearing, so also when traveling from the downgeared area back to the motor output shaft we experience mechanical disadvantage. Up-gearing. Which means the bolt hanging as a load to place tension on the pulleys during a release cycle was not enough weight anymore (was barely enough before now clearly not enough). Now note that the bolt represents what a tension spring will normally be doing, tensing up the winch system to keep it all solid and tight. I don't want this to have to be much heavier than the bolt. I want the system to not need much pulling to remain good in tension. The friction of the teflon tubing plus mechanical disadvantage etc was causing the pulleys to not remain tense (and their not being lubed yet on the junction between fishing crimp sleeve and thumb tack. So my solution I'm now contemplating is either moving one of the turn in place winches down to the location of the Archimedes pulleys on the forearm area and putting the tensioner apparatus between it and the previous pulley mounted on the motor so that the tensioner apparatus does not suffer as much mechanical disadvantage due to up-gearing OR I get rid of the second pulley entirely and just have the winch in place be a single pulley 2:1 and the Archimedes system be 16:1. Which still works as we have then 32:1 which is great still. Under such a system, the original 27" winching would be reduced to 13.5" by the winch in place pulley attached to the motor. The Archimedes pulley system then needs to go down, around one pulley, back up, around another pulley, then down and around another pulley, then back up and tie off. The total travel for those one down, one up, one down, one up (4 trips) is 13.5/4 so 3.4". And we'd sit at 8:1 at that point. so adding two more pulleys beneath that first group would add another 4:1 for 32:1 total. And those two pulleys would add another half inch tops so that gives us around 4" total length of the Archimedes system and not too crazy many turns in that first system like we had in our first prototype. Still quite simplified comparatively speaking. So this is a very viable solution. And that 4" is around 10cm and we had 11cm already planned for this purpose in the CAD in the forearm from before. So we are still within that target and viable still without any change to the CAD at all which is great.

Anyways, back to the test's issues discovered. Oh yeah, also, the load (in this case a bolt hanging) struggled to keep the turn in place winches under tension while the motor was releasing the bolt (loosening or unwinching itself) not only because of the mechanical disadvantage from the pulley upgearing itself and from the friction in the TPFE guidance tubing but also from the friction of yet another pulley and its friction between its fishing crimp sleeve and its thumbtack. So I was having to manually pull down assisting the bolt, pulling down fairly hard just to get the system to stay taught and release without becoming a derailed tangled mess.

One other work around if I were insistent on going with more than one winch in place pulley would be to wind up extra line onto each turn in place winch pulley and have that directly attached to a tensioner spring placed wherever on the robot. This would always keep tension on just that winch in place pulley and be responsible for just that pulley and suffer no mechanical disadvantage beyond the TPFE guidance tubing it has to pass through to get there which shouldn't be too bad if the spring can be nearby. This is a valid solution but adds another layer of complexity to the winch in place pulleys and now more routing and string to deal with. It also means loads of extra springs to place. Attached is a drawing of the proposed tensioning mechanism for tensioning each pulley individually.




In any case, were I to add this type of tensioning apparatus to each pulley and the necessary extra plastic disc and vertical spacing to glue string to the fishing crimp sleeve and wrap it up, that takes up even more vertical space in the system and we were already really lacking sufficient space as is. So to gain the extra space needed to do that, we'd have to extend the height of the fishing crimp sleeve to accommodate this which would then remove the option to add the reverse direction set of pulleys to the same thumb tack. Although that is probably fine now that we were planning to achieve that with just a tension spring as the actuator for extension of fingers instead of motor actuated extension and coupling that with a n20 gear motor for extra oomph in demand on a rare as needed basis for extension action when the tension spring is not strong enough to do it for the task at hand (rare). So yeah, this apparatus would work to solve the issues I'm having with my current test setup I think. But just going 16:1 on the Archimedes instead of 8:1 on the Archimedes pulleys and simply deleting the second winch in place pulley on the motor seems like the best option to me right now. Doing so means the Archimedes pulleys bumps up from 27/4 = 6.75" for Archimedes pulleys to deal with 6.75/4 (for up and down passes around first group of pulleys) so 1.68" in length then another pulley brings it to 2.1" total length compared to 27/2 (only one winch in place pulley) = 13.5" for Archimedes pulleys to deal with 13.5/4 (for up and down passes around first group of pulleys) so 3.4" then add 2 more pulleys so 4.2". So 2.1" vs 4.2". If we keep the second winch in place pulley we shave off 2.1" in Archimedes pulley system total length and shave off one pulley from its system too. Well I think just going 16:1 on the Archimedes is my move here. The winch in place pulleys have been a finicky mess to me. I prefer the Archimedes style pulley more and prefer to have that do the lions share of the downgearing after that first winch in place pulley cuts our total run-out in half. It still is a very useful help to cut things in half like that and much appreciated. But any more winch in place action is asking for trouble. I am much less able to control it and prevent issues that I feel I can do with the Archimedes pulley system. And you all have not seen my Archimedes pulley system in action it is really beautiful and elegant to watch and totally silent. So I'll rely on it more and keep the winching turn in place pulleys to the minimum 2:1.

Someone trying to do their own robot may appreciate that I'm leaving these options for further exploration open for future devs. I'm going the way I am most comfortable but if you think the winching method is more comfy for you, downgear more with those than I chose. I am not ruling that out here - just preferring the Archimedes more based on my experiences so far.

[cgroen]

For some time, I thought you were just trolling.
Now I just feel sorry for you, you should really seek professional help, I mean that in the best way, no joke intended!

[artbyrobot]

For some time, I thought you were just trolling.
Now I just feel sorry for you, you should really seek professional help, I mean that in the best way, no joke intended!

Actually I feel sorry for you cgroen.  I think you should seek professional help because you think a hobbyist roboticist should seek professional help just because you don't agree with all of his design choices despite the fact you are unable to point out a single flaw which should be easy right?  If they are so bad right?  And yet you have failed to do so and therefore need to seek professional help based on your clear Dunning Kreuger affect, thinking to have the ability to determine the viability of cutting edge robotics designs when clearly you don't have this ability.

[ebastler]

For some time, I thought you were just trolling.
Now I just feel sorry for you, you should really seek professional help, I mean that in the best way, no joke intended!

I'm afraid you may be right there. Let's face it, nobody is immune against the risk of getting into some downward spiral. Career plans not panning out; financial bottlenecks; tensions in the marriage and family life; maybe some stroke of fate in the family -- some problems tend to lead to others, some are just cruel luck.

It is tempting to respond by withdrawing into some "safe harbor" -- be it dogmatic religion or a pet project into which you sink all your time and energy. That may help with retaining self-esteem and hanging on, but in the long run brings the risk of getting out of touch with reality and digging your hole even deeper.

Obviously we don't know the OP personally, so the above it not meant as a "diagnosis". But the bits we know from forum posts and various other disclosures on the web would at least be consistent with a situation along those lines. Reaching out for help to try and dig out of that hole might be the right step.

[artbyrobot]

This is all so sad.  The more you say get help and how sad the more sad I feel for you since in the end, you are digging yourselves a deeper hole.  It will be all the harder for you to save face when I succeed and you have to admit you were completely blind and misjudging the situation so grossly.  I don't want, at that time, for you to fall into a deep depression and such shame that you are afraid to show your face.  Know that I forgive you in advance for being so blind.  Some people are just delusional this way.

[xrunner]

To artyrobot:

BUILD THE ROBOT

If you have multi-million dollar machine tools then use them

If you only have  common tools available to most hobbyists use them

In the end nobody will care what methods you used. It's your project and if you insist on doing it with the tools available to you, use them. Nobody here can stop you. However we can voice our opinion on the odds of success building it with common tools and Hobby Lobby materials, and from the pictures you post here, and the YT videos you put up. Several of us rate the success as very, very low. I personally rate it, considering the tools you have and knowledge you exhibit, as almost impossible (for you). I don't rate it impossible for a large company with real engineering experts working on the different systems, such as Boston Dynamics et.al.

Contrary to what you say, I do not believe you have anywhere close to the deep skills and engineering knowledge it takes because I have seen no evidence of it. Even if you were a PhD in one of the fields needed to make this work, such as the software engineering of artificial intelligence systems, but didn't know squat about mechanical engineering, I still wouldn't say you would succeed.

But nevermind all of that, all you have to prove me (us) wrong is one thing -

BUILD THE ROBOT

[joeqsmith]

As far as machining some small pulleys and some mounting pins for you to compare

There we go everyone 

He immediately admits he will cheat.  He will use a lathe, cnc machine, probably $100k worth of equipment to show he can build the same pulleys I did peice of cake right?  Or better yet, he will pull out his $1 million metal laser scintering machine for micro scale fabrication.  News flash everyone:  I made these with scissors, recycled plastic from strawberry containers and super glue.  You get to make it using THOSE methods, not a literal fortune worth of special machinery.  If you can prove you can do that while far exceeding my skils, THEN and only then do you have ANY room to talk smack.

You have claimed it is a business (although I doubt it).   Leaving the paper mache and macaroni art for the children, and investing more into making your scam at least look the part, may help drum up interest.   

If you would like to compete with me and others, start by picking a topic of common interest and providing constraints.  Last time I joined such a thread, the admin's locked my account for a few days.     Poor admins.  I feel sorry for them.   

[armandine2]

..against my better judgement 

but one I didn't make earlier .. but was promising albeit at a fundamental level of understanding, was ramshackle I guess

[Manul]

I make my own steel needles for precision probing at home. Sub-micrometer tip diameter. The TEM picture is a bummer, cause magnetic field moved the needle and the tip got damaged.

[ebastler]

..against my better judgement 
but one I didn't make earlier .. but was promising albeit at a fundamental level of understanding, was ramshackle I guess

In keeping with the tradition of this thread, I think the appropriate answer is: "I was suprised to see someone from the UK making something like this, but then realized that you only found it on the intnernet."

[Manul]

On a serious note. I was just thinking. We are all born with incredible capabilities to learn and improve. You, me, artbyrobot, everyone. And whatever we do, there is always a place for improvement. Except if you think that it's all just perfect. Then any improvement stops. In fact, it likely goes backwards - you start slowly degrading.

Reading this thread I'm so shocked that OP does not realize the need for improvement or that anything at all is wrong. Kinda reminds me of tone-deaf people, who just can't realize how out of tune they are. They may insist that they sing perfectly fine, just like Whitney Houston. You can tell them, you can record them and play it back - they just can't believe that anything is wrong. Until 100 people tell them same... Unfortunately, out of a hundred people there might be someone who is tone-deaf too. And they will assure that the singing is indeed very good. And because we have what is called "confirmation bias", a person will assign a much higher priority to that one supportive opinion. Now everyone else who are not tone-deaf are just "haters". And it's all pretty hopeless at that point. So I came up with a perfect (pun intended) description of OP: tech-deaf. Or blind. Or I don't know. But you get the idea.

[Kim Christensen]

Rather than playing with pulleys and string, it would be more productive to source/modify/make quieter reduction gearboxes.
Being too quiet is a safety fear we often hear about EVs. Yet most of these have a reduction gearbox and are driven by 30kW or larger electric motors. They use helical gears and lubrication in the gearbox.  Their tires rolling on the pavement make far more noise, than the motor and gearbox, while transferring kilowatts of power to the wheels.

[Xena E]

 ..."confirmation bias", a person will assign a much higher priority to that one supportive opinion.

Mediocrity does love company...

[artbyrobot]

As to exploring quieter gear based downgearing, I hope some people are doing that.  Just today I read about axial solenoids acting as motors of some sort.  There are possibilities here possibly also.  But I am not well equipped to do either as far as constructing gear systems or axial solenoids.  These jobs I am giving to others to pursue and investigate.  It is a whole field and it is not my job as a hobbyist to explore all custom solutions that are innovative approaches nor is it practical for me to attempt this.  Right now, I believe pulleys are a great answer, not the only answer necessarily but at this time the best answer in my opinion.  It seems they are also potentially the easiest to make using basic tools and components available cheaply.  Unless I hit a deadend I find I cannot break through and truly give up on pulleys, which has not happened by a long shot so far, I will continue to trial and error refine my pulley approach until I theoretically get to something very reliable, robust, silent, and efficient and excellent all around.  There will be some trade-offs like maybe not as durable as metal gears perhaps.  But with that comes the huge bonus of total silence of actuation.  That's a trade I'd make especially when the intention is for the robots to do their own maintenance.  The duration of parts becomes a low priority if you have free automated maintenance available.

[Manul]

As to exploring quieter gear based downgearing, I hope some people are doing that.  Just today I read about axial solenoids acting as motors of some sort.  There are possibilities here possibly also.  But I am not well equipped to do either as far as constructing gear systems or axial solenoids.  These jobs I am giving to others to pursue and investigate.  It is a whole field and it is not my job as a hobbyist to explore all custom solutions that are innovative approaches nor is it practical for me to attempt this.  Right now, I believe pulleys are a great answer, not the only answer necessarily but at this time the best answer in my opinion.  It seems they are also potentially the easiest to make using basic tools and components available cheaply.  Unless I hit a deadend I find I cannot break through and truly give up on pulleys, which has not happened by a long shot so far, I will continue to trial and error refine my pulley approach until I theoretically get to something very reliable, robust, silent, and efficient and excellent all around.  There will be some trade-offs like maybe not as durable as metal gears perhaps.  But with that comes the huge bonus of total silence of actuation.  That's a trade I'd make especially when the intention is for the robots to do their own maintenance.  The duration of parts becomes a low priority if you have free automated maintenance available.

So you do realize that engineering is trade-offs. That is very good. I will tell you what I think. I know that the pulley system will not work for you as you want. So what about making a trade-off of noise? And use an off the shelf gearbox which will work well? And move towards other challenges? You can always upgrade it later if you want. Or, as you say, the robot itself can do maintenance and upgrade or rebuild itself.

I remember I once had a interesting real life conversation, somewhat philosophical. The starting question was, can you jump start a car with a coin cell battery. I said no. I was asked, how do I know for sure without ever trying? Maybe everyone just calculates that it's impossible and never tries. But if they would try, they would find that because of some undiscovered mechanism it actually works? The conversation quickly expanded into something much more deep.

People tend to think that experience is a wast knowledge of how to do certain things. But if you think more deeply, you realize that much more important aspect of experience is knowing what NOT to do. What NOT to try. It's a state when all fake targets disappear and only real targets are left. Pretty much does not matter what topic you take. For instance, really good chess players tend to discard most of the moves in split second, then spend the rest of time deeply calculating 1 or 2 which they did not discard. Compared to mediocre players who try to calculate many moves where they reach dead end and waste lots of time.

[artbyrobot]

No, noisy robots are trash Manul.  Pay attention.

[Manul]

No, noisy robots are trash Manul.  Pay attention.

ok

[xrunner]

No, noisy robots are trash Manul.  Pay attention.

ok

Nah I want noise, I don't want the damn thing sneaking up on me from behind.