Given the idea of our project, we realised that Poppy won’t use its bottom motors (going from hips to feet). Indeed, Poppy will assist children in a hospital room and will be mostly forced to stay near the bed, being able to express himself but not to walk.
So we decided to study the way to remove those motors and replace them with 3D printed pieces in order to reduce costs of acquisition for the hospitals.
This is a good idea your project
It is possible to replace those motor with 3d printed part. But do you need rotation for those printing piece?
Because if you need rotation, there are 3 printing parts for each motors, but if you don’t need rotation, there are one printing part for each motor
Thanks for your answer.
We have to share this with the doctors but as far as we are concerned, we were planning on having the whole bottom of Poppy stated. So there should be no need for any rotation.
But we will settle this with the paediatricians/child psychiatrists. There may be a risk that children will be willing to play with the legs, and brake them. Or just won’t appreciate non-moving legs…
So thank you, we’ll suggest the 2 options!
Any other suggestion regarding the specifications/costing will also be appreciated ;).
Hello @Maximilien. I think it is a good idea to use only the torso of the robot, which could be put on a table with some tinkering. So in practice I think what can be done is just remove entirely the low part of the body (below the middle motor of the torso) and tinker an attachment scheme.
Also: the link to the project specifications you provide is not accessible. Could you provide access to this document?
What and when are the next milestones that you target in the project?
Oops…The link should now be working :).
4 students (ENSEIRB-MATMECA Bordeaux) are now interns and will work on the project. They have to specify our roadmap first (in about 2 weeks) then will develop the usecases in order to illustrate the project by experimenting it at mid April.
2 other students from another school (ENSC Bordeaux) now also work on the project and have to implement some usecase aswell. Besides, I’m going to explore with their teachers the opportunity to have them study the robot-children interaction aspect.
Also I’m looking for a way right now to invest on a Poppy (or half Poppy) so they’ll have a permanent access to it, that could speed things up.
Ok @Matthieu do not hesitate to give us feedback on this experiment.
Actually doctors figured it could be disturbing to have the torso only (for the children I mean). That’s why we were planning on removing the bottom motors but keep the full human aspect.
But having Poppy on a table could (maybe?) be easily adjusted to the bed table that are in the rooms.
I’ll remind that option aswell.
No i think we need some rotation degrees in the spine to test the best ways for Poppy to talk (physical gestures while talking I mean).
So we need to maintain Poppy stated on a stool (maybe table ?) or something else (that we don’t know yet I guess you got it).
Then we’ll have him speech and offer activities while occupying the space around him a bit in order to encourage children to listen the most.
And that will be it till mid-april I guess. Unless the team really kills it!
I think one possibility would be to put clothes (e.g. a dress if the students decide it may be a female Poppy :)) so that users do not see there are no legs actually. The robot could be setup on a small table around which the dress could be put.
The students are welcome also to participate directly on this forum !
Exactly what was planning on doing one of the student actually, but she was thinking of a t-shirt instead ;).
They are now building a torso thanks to Poppy project.
They were asking how they could contribute to Poppy project through the forum, since a lot of what they are doing right now is already done :
installation guides,
getting to know/code on VRep,
all about Pypot
how to build a Poppy (torso only).
So we identified it could be interesting to create a feed regarding :
The state of the art and explanation of “why a humanoid ?”
Maybe a post on which camera should I choose ? But I understood yesterday that the choice should be obvious and limited ?
Also, the students will need to modify VRep model for Poppy in order to have a Poppy torso so they’ll get to it next week and share right after.
Do you see any other topic in which an interest for the community could lie to ecourage students into sharing ?
a first great contribution is already what they are doing: exploring how the platform can be used in a particular context of application, that is assistive robotics. Here what will be useful to the community is if they can report through the forum what are the targets, how they use or transform the platform, discussing ideas of how it could be improved to be even better suited for these kinds if uses.
Then, another thing extremely useful would be to build repertoires of behaviours for the torso in such a context and share them with the community. The best way to do this is would be to build tutorials as an IPython notebook allowing for example other students like them to take on their work for another student project.
Also, for installation guides, tutorials about pypot, etc, there are many ways in which they can be improved
And one of the challenges is also to provide contents and tutorials in French (and other languages),
Thanks for your feedback @oudeyer, interesting food for thoughts.
At the moment the next milestone we defined is :
Mid-march : ability to demonstrate the following usecase :
« Poppy introduces himself, Poppy recognizes his interlocutor, Poppy greets him orally while adopting a conventional gesture »
(I’m not sure about my translation on that one but I hope you get the idea )
Once we get that one, we’ll feed the community and the world with a short demonstration.
)