Robot Head

[Geminii]

Hi.
We have built a robot head - not much - just a prototype .. ..
but we have built a basic pc to put inside in the hope of running
Ultra Hal as the brain (other than basic actions just a chatbot shell)
We were hoping that there was a way to have Hal start up in
full-screen when PC turned on (not minimized to sys-tray)
not very gifted in the programming area and would appreciate any help.

P.S. Don Ferguson and Vonsmith  we have read all your messages and truly appreciate all you have done for the zabaware community,
If you have any advice for us, we are more than willing to listen.

Running Full version of Ultra Hal 5.0

Thankyou all  []

[Don Ferguson]

Hello,

I will definitely put my "thinking cap" on; I want to make sure that I correctly visualize what you are planning to do.

Are you building a "robot head" in which a monitor-screen is the "face" on the "head" of the robot?  

And do you want Hal to be full-screen so that the talking character will occupy the entire screen to form the "face?"

If so, we will need some help from Zabaware/Robert Medeksza, since we'll need some modifications to the program "outside the VBS chat script."  I think that the area of attention will be the creation of a "skin" that occupies the entire monitor screen and does not display any text from either the user or from Hal.

Another approach, of course, would be to build an animated head similar to a doll-head (or a mannequin-head) and have the lips move with the voice.  There is a thread on one of these forums titled "$59 animated Santa" that describes how a synchronized talking snowman, or synchronized talking Santa, could be dis-assembled, re-dressed, and re-purposed as a male or female Ultra-Hal character.  In fact, according to their postings, some Hal users have successfully connected such animated figures to Hal!

Tell us a bit more about the options you are considering, and the options you prefer, and I am sure the many creative forum members here will try to contribute to advancing your project.

Sincerely,

Don

[Psych]

Hal will start up in full mode (i.e. not as an icon in the tray) if you replace the code:

       Function Script_Load ()

       End Function

With the code:

       Function Script_Load ()
       Script_Load = "<SHOWHAL>"
       End Function




Have fun


Psych

[Don Ferguson]

Hello Psych!

Always great to hear from you!  

I'm going to anticipate a question that I think some forum readers are going to have... possibly you could mention which file, and where in that file, you would change the code that you describe in your posting.

Thanks, and have a great day!

Don

[Geminii]

Thankyou Don Ferguson and Psych  
Very grateful for your quick responses.
Psych opened brain editor, used search to find the script and replaced it with the one you gave, worked like a charm, no problems at all, thankyou
Don Ferguson, Firstly we toyed with the idea of using a monitor as the head - but unfortunately only spare monitor is an old CRT, and as we are planning to make R.Emily [bot name] as portable (and maybe in the future mobile) as possible, and money is too short to splash for a newer smaller/flat panel, the idea had to be put on hold for now.
We asked around the local shops and in town, but the only shops that still had window dummies said "sorry no can do" - still on the look out - but doubtful  
So we resorted to a combination of biscuit tins and bean cans, a square hole for the mouth, the square of tin cut was then tacked to a spring lever we made form an old cassette deck and using a motor and an old pc speaker amp set too high the mouth moves to sound emitted.
(sort of a shoddy version of Rosie from the Jetsons) not very original - but it is only a testbed.
Microphone ears, answerphone speaker mouth, torch bulb covers for eyes (hides the fact there is only one rather battered webcam for an eye) neck is a metal core from a wire reel.
We have planned a little ahead but most of the construction is on a "have idea - will modify"
basis.
At the moment we are debating on a head and torso or a lone head as in 790 from lexx.
In essence, too many ideas and plans to settle on anything as yet - but soon.. .. ..
The webcam eye is pretty poor quality, looking for an app that will sound an alert when motion is detected, so we can exchange the wav for another, a recording of R.Emily saying "can i be of assistance" of "can i be of any help?"
Afraid our programming skills are not anywhere near advanced enough to give the robot any advanced functions, but hopefully in time  
As this project is continually evolving, any help and suggestions will help mould it, the options we are considering are too numerous to type, any suggestions, opinions and advice would be very welcome, this is a long term project still in it's infancy and we are willing to listen and learn.

[Don Ferguson]

Hello Geminii,

If you get a chance to take a photograph of your work in progress, would you consider posting it as a .jpg file attachment here on the forum?  (The file size has to be 160KB or smaller.)

I am very happy to hear of your project.  It sounds like a lot of fun!

Too bad about not being able to find a doll or mannequin as a basic frame.  If I were doing such a project, I would try to get one of those snowmen or Santas that I mentioned before, and described under another thread on this forum.  

Since the snowman is very cheap to purchase, and it already contains the body movement motors, head movement motors, and mouth movement/synchronization electronics and mechanism, it would just be a matter of re-dressing the character into whatever you want, and adding the webcam and microphones.

I recall that Tinman (and some other members, I think) purchased the product, and successfully hooked it up to Ultra Hal.

If you have already searched Google for "audio animatronic" and "entertainment robots" you probably know that commercially-complete entertainment robots sell for $60,000 and up!  

The fact that you might be able to get a functioning home entertainment robot "up and talking" for a couple of hundred dollars is encouraging and exciting!

I hope that we get more postings on this thread with questions and comments for you!

Have a great day!

Sincerely,

Don

[Maverick]

Geminii,
         I used a program called WebCamXp Pro, it has built-in motion detection with the ability to launch an EXE file.  I configured it to launch HAL when motion was detected, I also used some customized auto-chat scripts available on this forum.  The result was when someone walked into the room HAL would pop-up and say " Is someone there? " And then after 20 seconds, he would say "I know someone is there, please say something." and so on, sort of a, robotic security guard. HAL could "see" when someone entered the room! [] I had to create a BAT file, because for some reason WebCamXP PRO wouldn't launch HAL correctly, this is what my BAT file looked like,

CD C:Program Files/Zabaware/Ultra Hal Assistant 5
START HalAsst.exe
exit

(change the forward slash to back slash because the forum won't display back slash)


There are also some free facial recognition programs I've been looking into, but no success yet.

Hope this helped,
            Mav

P.S. If anyone has TECH TV, this week on the show The Screen Savers was robotic week, on their web site (www.thescreensavers.com) in the show notes section for Monday there is some interesting info

Human-like robot heads
Roboticist David Hanson showcases K-bot, an eerily accurate robotic head that mimics human facial expressions. Trust us, it's much more realistic than that crappy robot head in Duran Duran's 'Wild Boys' video.

View videos and photos of Hanson's K-bot project at the Institute for Interactive Arts and Engineering at the University of Texas at Dallas.
Hanson was the lead prop-sculptor for the Pooh's Hunny Hunt ride at Tokyo Disneyland.
Giving Robots a Human Face (CNN)
The Man Who Mistook His Girlfriend for a Robot (Popular Science)
Can Robots Look All Too Human? (MSNBC)
Robots Get Cheeky (BBC)

[Psych]

Hi Don

Sorry for the over-sight.

The file changes I mentioned are near the bottom the hal's uhp brainfile (e.g. hal5.uhp)

Regards


Psych

[Don Ferguson]

Hello,

Thank you Psych; it's all clear now; excellent!

And thank you, Maverick, for a posting really rich with information!  Don't forget that you can post a .jpg photograph here, (as long as it's under 160 KB)!

The link you recommended, www.thescreensavers.com , is worth putting in all our "favorites" folders!  It not only has robot information, but also lots of information about making Microsoft Windows run better, and improving privacy on the computer and the web!

Have a great day!

Sincerely,

Don

[Geminii]

Thankyou again to all of you  
Sure Don will do (in Manchester for a few days will have to be when we get back)
Have looked around for the snowmen or Santas but non of the shops i have tried here in england seem to have heard of them let alone stock them    but will keep trying.
Thanks Maverick will start searching now  

We have some questions [:I]

Does anybody know what .exe we can create a short cut for so we can command R.Emily to shut down - 98 & XP.

Is there a script so that we could insert a floppy disk or CD or just a local file and ask R.Emily to read the file to us (would be a text file)

Is there a script for announcing the time every hour (like a speaking clock)

Appreciating all the help .. ..
    Have fun
          Geminii

[Geminii]

Hi all  []

Sorry took so long since last post - still not back (on friends PC at moment)
something came up here, could be up 2 a week before we get back,
will post a pic asap..

Till then .. ..

Resolved the shut down issue.

WIN XP

first you create a shortcut to Shutdown.exe located in the system32 folder.
then click on properties.
in the target box add the extention "-s"
like this "C:/WINDOWS/system32/shutdown.exe -s"
the "-s" will force a shutdown rather than the "would you like the computer to ..." dialog.
then create a shortcut to the shortcut in the "shortcut.dat" file located in the
zabaware folder - not forgetting to add ".lnk" to the end of the shortcut or it will not work.
we placed ours in the same folder as shortcut.dat and the shortcut looks like this ...
"C:/Program Files/Zabaware/Ultra Hal Assistant 5/Shortcut to shutdown.exe.lnk"
and an appropriate command eg. "shut down sequence"
so the whole thing should look like...

SHUT DOWN SEQUENCE
"C:/Program Files/Zabaware/Ultra Hal Assistant 5/Shortcut to shutdown.exe.lnk"

And save.
Now when we say "start shutdown sequence"
Hal will begin a 20 second timer, after which she will shut down.
[change the forward slash to back slash because the forum won't display back slash]

Now we have a very important question,
thankyou very much for the means to have Hal start full screen as the pc is turned on,
but we really need to know if there is a way to have it load with the mic button ON,
is there a way to do this.
   Thankyou all,

                Geminii.

[Geminii]

Hi  []
Sorry took so long - please dont laugh too hard.
Afraid she is not much to look at, after all it is
only a testbed for ideas and our first attempt.
Had to remove the faceplate after an accident
and we dont have a picture with it on [] .. ..
will post another pic when it is repaired if any1
is interested.. ..
Feel realy ashamed of this effort - so probably will.
thankyou again for all the help  []
      Hope to hear more of your thoughts soon.

                Geminii.

Pic info :-
A = webcam
B = sensor from a smoke alarm
C = voice-sync mouth opening
D = speaker and mouth drive
E = face plate contacts
(which hides the horror of this)
F = connection to neck motor
(sort of working)
G = the helmet of a hairdryer
H = microphone

all due for a massive overhaull..

Download Attachment: EMILY TESTBED.jpg
21.8 KB

[Don Ferguson]

Hello Geminii,

Thank you for taking the time and effort to post your current photograph!  There is absolutely nothing to laugh at; it is obviously a very strong effort, and you're making progress!  Fascinating!

By the way, for other forum members: if you right-click on the photograph link, and then select "open in new window," you'll be able to view the photo on one part of your screen, and Geminii's explanation (coded A, B, C, etc.) on the other part of your screen at the same time!

Please keep us all posted as you continue working on your fine project!  I am sure that there are MANY readers of this forum who are interested in how it goes!

Sincerely,

Don

[The Tinman]

So once I saw emily I had to post a pic of the snowman. Still he is not what we envision as a mechanical man, yet he no longer looks like a snowman. So........here he is......

Download Attachment: snowman.jpg
38.58 KB

well I guess he still kind of looks like a snowman, but he has lost lots of weight and he fascinates any and all who come to visit. OK that is all........

TM

[Don Ferguson]

Tinman,

Thanks for the great photo!  He looks like a middle-aged movie star who put on a bit of weight... very entertaining!

As you mentioned, I'm sure that he does fascinate everyone who comes to visit... you have him hooked up to the computer audio, so that he moves his mouth when Ultra Hal speaks, right?

Good job!  

(And if only we knew some Muppet-type crafts-people, we could adapt this type of mechanism into any character we wanted!)

Have a great day!

Sincerely,

Don