BabblingHead
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Babbling Head
The Babbling Head perched upon the RobotBrain
http://www.cafeshops.com/morebrooks6
About
Babbling Robot Head is perhaps one of the finest examples of our group's efforts to meld art and technology. It is certainly one of the classiest. BrooksColeman who is a genius at wood crafting, designed and crafted the various woods that went into this piece. The wood elements are as diverse and rich as purple heart wood and oak and as raw as tanzania root. The organic brain in this robot is a piece a tanzania root that Brooks filed and fitted perfectly to this piece. The rawness and natural ridges of the wood root give it a very natural organic looking brain. The base of the piece is purple heart wood and the neck and collar bones are pow amavia woods.
Brooks who also does metal forging tailored the metal nose and half head piece for Babbling Head while Laurie Davis forged the eyes. The eyeballs are hammered silver with l.e.d. 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 actually a dryer vent pipe.
The servos are each fitted with winch pullies which Brooks lathed out of nylon as well as machining a custom tool to create the spline that fits the standard futaba servo shaft.
This robot is fitted with a Mini SSC II board that operates a series of hobby servo motors that move the lips, eyeballs and neck areas. The DecTalk provides the computer voice that brings the Babbling Robot Head to life. AlexIles was very instrumental in developing and programming the original exhibit controller for this piece. BillCraig assisted with the original programming and the speech synthesis. Later, EricLundquist added real-time speech synchronization with the DecTalk.
The Babbling Head is currently being integrated into the RobotBrain project.
Video
DrunkenSailor.mpg The Babbling Head and DecTalk sing a rousing rendition of "What Do You Do With A Drunken Sailor?" /!\ Warning! 4.6MB Mpeg-1 file
The Code
The C Source code TalkingHead.c that drives Babbling Robot Head is here.
Recent News
* March 2007 - BabblingHead makes an appearance at DorkBot2007 and is picked up by BBC News * July 2004 - BabblingHead sings at CamCarnival2004 and AustinLibrary2004 * November 2003 - BabblingHead sings at Barton Creek Elementary GtClass2003 * August 2003 - BabblingHead makes its first major motion picture debut in ArmadilloNews. * July 2003 - BabblingHead appears on InsomniacwithDaveAttell
