Artbyrobot - Home of the Larrybot!

Frequently Asked Questions

Will the robot have realistic genitalia?

I am leaning more toward the Barbie and Ken doll approach to this. I want the robot to be rated G and able to be worked on in front of people of any age even without it being clothed. Plus, if it had realistic genitalia, that could overshadow the serious scientific and technological nature of the project.

Do you have a job outside of this?

Yes, I'm a solopreneur and this is one of my 3 companies. I prefer not to divulge those companies as I don't want to disclose information that can lead to knowing my home address (don't want to be pranked or abducted or robbed or w/e).

How long do you think this project is going to take?

I anticipate that the building of the robot will take 10 years and that the coding of all of the advanced A.I. and capabilities will take another 20 years.

How much money do you think this project will cost?

I anticipate the build will cost me between $20,000 and $30,000 in raw materials. The rest of the cost is my time and opportunity cost. However, I think those will be VERY well compensated for before this project is through!

Don't you want a team of people to help?

No I prefer to remain solo at least for this first robot build because I think that is what makes this project special and makes it stand out. It is far more impressive and inspiring for one person to pull off a project of this magnitude than for a large team of scientists to pull off the same feat. By remaining solo, I believe more people will take an interest and this will make the project and the growth of the fans of the project a greater success overall.

Why do you want to build a robot?

I have been fascinated with robotics and automation since I first started hearing about advanced robotics in my college years. Since then, robotics have continued to grow in our pop culture and in complexity. They have so many incredible robotics videos on Youtube and on movies these days that I got really inspired and decided to finally make my dream of building a robot a reality!

What is the exoskeleton mesh for?

The exoskeleton mesh defines the shape of the muscles of the body and will be used as a framework onto which the realistic silicone skin will be built. The hollow area formed by the exoskeleton will be where I will locate all of the electronics, motors, and tendon pulley systems. I create the mesh prior to setting up the bones and electronics in order to have a detailed volume defined beforehand which enables me to decide where to locate the various components so that they will fit appropriately. The mesh will also be designed to deform, rotate, twist, bulge, and extend in a fashion that simulates the movements of muscle beneath the skin. This will make the robot appear to have muscles working inside of it!

Will it be battery powered?

Yes. It will use Sony Murata VTC6 18650 3000mAh 15A batteries. That said, I'm aiming to have most of the robot's run-time be based on direct feed from a wall electrical outlet. My plan is to have him always plugged in unless he is switching to a new room/electrical outlet in which case he will unplug his main power cable from the wall, walk to the next room/outlet, plug his main power cord into that new outlet and proceed with his business. His main power cord will be retractable and come out from his lower back when needed. It will have onboard batteries as much as I can pack in there but this will not give much run-time unfortunately due to space constraints. So for prolonged battery runtime with no AC power access, he will strap on a backpack containing batteries. This will be useful for sports, mowing, etc where AC wall outlet access is not readily available. He can wear one battery backpack while another is charging so that he can swap them out when needed and keep running with no downtime while outdoors.

Will it use Raspberry Pi or Pickaxe?

I am not planning to use Rasberry Pi or Pickaxe. I'm planning to use a full blown proper pc processor like a Intel i7 processor. I'm planning to use a mini ITX custom gaming pc running Windows 7 to be the "brains" running the main software engine in the chest of the robot. This will then interface by USB with a series of Arduinos which in turn interface to servomotor controller boards and sensors. The Arduinos will leave all high level motion planning to the main brains PC and will just act like little worker bots taking commands from above.

What programming language will you use?

I am planning to use C++ to code the bot.

Do You have any programming experience?

As a matter of fact I do! I have done some very large, complex, software systems development in C++ for non-related projects and a lot of what I learned while doing that will cross over nicely into this project. I have also created pixel scan image recognition algorithms in the past so implementing "computer vision" will be just a matter of copy and paste as well as some additional improvements to my existing vision system. I have also toyed some with artificial intelligence. As of 2021, I have been working on the AI of the robot from time to time and have gotten huge progress there. I really feel like I have figured out how to program the robot to learn and program itself and grow in intelligence independent of my involvement. The goal is for him to learn through conversations with anyone he speaks to online or in person as well as be able to Google search his own questions and watch youtube videos for his own questions to fill his knowledge and understanding just like we do. He will then be self taught! But for him to have the ability to self teach, a great deal of base level knowledge will have to be hard coded into him to get the ball rolling and then he can build on that foundation I hard code into him to evolve from there.

Are you not concerned the robot will try to kill you and take over the world?

I'm not concerned about that because that would require true artificial intelligence, ie "The Singularity". The singularity does not currently exist and may never exist. Machines gaining "consciousness" would be a truly spectacular feat of programming that would require a deep understanding of how the human mind works, which nobody currently has or else we would have The Singularity by now - and we don't have it. I did attempt to figure out how to make a machine that could learn and reprogram itself, however, my delvings and ponderings into this subject matter kept hitting dead ends and kept leading to profound questions for which I could not surmise answers. My robot will hopefully be able to learn and come to conclusions on various things on its own eventually, however, it will have a hard coded excellent morality system based on the Bible and will then be upright, blameless and righteous based on its Biblical values and will be harmless because of this. Although the robot may try to preach to you and convert you to Christianity which will be harmful to atheists who hate God in the sense that it will annoy them greatly.

How will the joints be actuated?

The joints will be actuated through a tendon based system powered by servos and a complex pulley system. The servos act like fishing reels reeling in fishing line and that fishing line it reels in is the muscle contracting which moves the body joints like real muscles do. The muscle strings will be guided in teflon tubing which is the same way bike brakes are guided in rubber hoses on bikes. I will be using 100% nylon upholstery thread for smaller servos and for medium to high powered servos I will go with Dyneema/Spectra woven 100lb test fishing line and will weave this into 4-5 braided strands if I need to in order to achieve even higher strengths as needed.

What kind of servos will it use?

All servos will be custom servos that will be built using parts I buy individually to create my own cost effective DIY servos with form factors optimized to fit into my humanoid's body efficiently. I will not be using gears to "downgear" my servos. If/when I need downgearing, I will use compact pulley systems which I learned about on this youtube video at around 9:35 mark. This will be a nice quiet and robust solution for downgearing that takes up hardly any space and is super cheap to implement. Because brushless DC motors are variable speed steppable, I may not even need to downgear them at all. But for small joints where I'm using brushed dc motors, I'll be downgearing with pulley systems.

For large muscle power, it will use custom servos built from N5065 Brushless DC electric skateboard motors along with custom h-bridge brushless motor control driver circuits to drive them.

For medium muscle power, it will use brushless DC motors for 1/8 (strongest), 1/10 (medium strong), 1/16th (least strong) scale RC motors. These will be driven by custom brushless motor control driver circuits. Can also group these to have multiple servos actuating a single joint via multiple "tendons/muscle strings".

For small muscle power, we'll use size 140 brushed dc motors driven by L9110S h-bridge chips (for finger joints for example - medium small power) and for really weak muscle power like facial expressions or eye movements, we can use Micro N20 brushed dc motors driven by l9110s hbridge chip controlled by Arduinos.

What kind of sensors?

Sonar, webcam eyes (I bought: ELP USB camera 1080p 2 megapixel, wide angle, low light x2 for $98.42), pressure sensors (aka strain gauges), gyro-meters, accelerometers, current sensors (acs712 current sensors 5a-30a range any voltage $1.50/each) - these measure how much draw servos pull which can tip off the AI to collision detection or how much weight its lifting, etc.

Will it have ai?

Yes, I will be programming on live-stream the entire ai engine myself and the ai will be the most extensive and time consuming part of the project. The AI is a multi-decade endeavor for me. It will all be done from scratch in C++.

Will it have true ai?

True ai or "consciousness" does not currently exist IRL and if it did, it would become "The Singularity". That's a scary thing and I do not plan to create that. But who knows maybe I will on accident and the robot will kill me and proceed to take over the world :(

How will it balance?

The balance is primarily a sensor, programming, and servo coordination challenge and will be a very challenging and FUN thing for me to take on. I simply CANNOT WAIT! But to explain this in depth would take a 50 page essay lol...

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