Overview
This
project is a collaboration with the world famous Stan Winston Studio. It
combines the studio's artistry and expertise in creating compelling animatronic
characters with state of the art research in socially intelligent robots. We
have christened this new character collaboration with a name that embodies art,
science and invention. Hence, the name "Leonardo" -- namesake of
Leonardo DaVinci, the Renaissance scientist, inventor and artist.
Indeed, Leonardo is the Stradivarius of expressive robots.
Indeed, Leonardo is the Stradivarius of expressive robots.
Robot
Mechanics
Leonardo has 69 degrees of freedom --- 32 of those are in the face alone. As a result, Leonardo is capable of near-human facial expression (constrained by its creature-like appearance). Although highly articulated, Leonardo is not designed to walk. Instead, its degrees of freedom were selected for their expressive and communicative functions. It can gesture and is able to manipulate objects in simple ways. Standing at about2.5 feet tall, it is the
most complex robot the studio has attempted (as of Fall 2001). Leonardo is the
most expressive robot in the world today.
Leonardo has 69 degrees of freedom --- 32 of those are in the face alone. As a result, Leonardo is capable of near-human facial expression (constrained by its creature-like appearance). Although highly articulated, Leonardo is not designed to walk. Instead, its degrees of freedom were selected for their expressive and communicative functions. It can gesture and is able to manipulate objects in simple ways. Standing at about
Robot Aesthetics
Unlike the vast majority of autonomous robots today, Leonardo has an organic appearance. It is a fanciful creature, clearly not trying to mimic any living creature today. This follows from our philosophy that robots are not and will never be dogs, cats, humans, etc. so there is no need to make them look as such. Rather, robots will be their own kind of creature and should be accepted, measured, and valued on those terms. We gave Leonardo a youthful appearance to encourage people to playfully interact with it much as one might with a young child.
Unlike the vast majority of autonomous robots today, Leonardo has an organic appearance. It is a fanciful creature, clearly not trying to mimic any living creature today. This follows from our philosophy that robots are not and will never be dogs, cats, humans, etc. so there is no need to make them look as such. Rather, robots will be their own kind of creature and should be accepted, measured, and valued on those terms. We gave Leonardo a youthful appearance to encourage people to playfully interact with it much as one might with a young child.
Embedded
Multi-Axis Motion Controller
Exploring human-robot interaction requires constructing increasingly versatile and sophisticated robots. Commercial motor-driver and motion-controller packages are designed with a completely different application in mind (specifically industrial robots with relatively small numbers of relatively powerful motors) and do not adapt well to complex interactive robots with a very large number of small motors controlling things like facial features. Leonardo, for instance, includes sixty-some motors in an extremely small volume. An enormous rack of industrial motion controllers would not be a practical means of controlling the robot; an embedded solution designed for this sort of application is required.
We have developed a motor control system to address the specific needs of many-axis interactive robots. It is based on a modular colletion of motor control hardware which is capable of driving a very large number of motors in a very small volume. Both 8-axis and 16-axis control packages have been developed.
These controllers support simultaneous absolute position and velocity feedback, allowing good dynamic performance without the need for lenghty calibration phase at power-up. Example firmware has been developed which supports accurate position estimation and PD control to a continuously-updated target position. The control system is highly flexible, allowing alternative control algorithms to be developed with ease.
A generic software library has also been developed to provide a clean interface betwen high-level control code and low-level motor hardware, as has a generic network protocol, known as the Intral-Robot Communications Protocol, which provides a simple and extensible framework for inter-module communication within a complex robot control system.
For instance, 4 of the 16-axis motor controller packages are used to control Leonardo. A single 8-axis package is used to control RoCo.
The motor drivers are standard FET H-bridges; recent advances in FET process technology permit surprisingly low RDS on losses, and switching at relatively low (1-10kHz) frequencies reduces switching losses. Hence, the power silicon (and thus the package as a whole) can be reduced in size. The audible hum and interference due to the low switching frequency (which is completely unacceptable for an organic looking robot) is eliminated by using a variable-mean spread-spectrum control signal, rather than traditional PWM. The sixteen channels each support current feedback, encoder feedback, and analog feedback, and the system is controlled by a custom SoC motion controller with an embedded soft processor core implemented in a Xilinx Virtex FPGA.
Exploring human-robot interaction requires constructing increasingly versatile and sophisticated robots. Commercial motor-driver and motion-controller packages are designed with a completely different application in mind (specifically industrial robots with relatively small numbers of relatively powerful motors) and do not adapt well to complex interactive robots with a very large number of small motors controlling things like facial features. Leonardo, for instance, includes sixty-some motors in an extremely small volume. An enormous rack of industrial motion controllers would not be a practical means of controlling the robot; an embedded solution designed for this sort of application is required.
We have developed a motor control system to address the specific needs of many-axis interactive robots. It is based on a modular colletion of motor control hardware which is capable of driving a very large number of motors in a very small volume. Both 8-axis and 16-axis control packages have been developed.
These controllers support simultaneous absolute position and velocity feedback, allowing good dynamic performance without the need for lenghty calibration phase at power-up. Example firmware has been developed which supports accurate position estimation and PD control to a continuously-updated target position. The control system is highly flexible, allowing alternative control algorithms to be developed with ease.
A generic software library has also been developed to provide a clean interface betwen high-level control code and low-level motor hardware, as has a generic network protocol, known as the Intral-Robot Communications Protocol, which provides a simple and extensible framework for inter-module communication within a complex robot control system.
For instance, 4 of the 16-axis motor controller packages are used to control Leonardo. A single 8-axis package is used to control RoCo.
The motor drivers are standard FET H-bridges; recent advances in FET process technology permit surprisingly low RDS on losses, and switching at relatively low (1-10kHz) frequencies reduces switching losses. Hence, the power silicon (and thus the package as a whole) can be reduced in size. The audible hum and interference due to the low switching frequency (which is completely unacceptable for an organic looking robot) is eliminated by using a variable-mean spread-spectrum control signal, rather than traditional PWM. The sixteen channels each support current feedback, encoder feedback, and analog feedback, and the system is controlled by a custom SoC motion controller with an embedded soft processor core implemented in a Xilinx Virtex FPGA.
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