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1. David Hanson has produced another head - of Albert Einstein. This head was ercently attached
to the Hubo humanoid being built at KAIST in Korea. It has a full range
of expressions (see: http://hansonrobotics.com/movies/AlbertHubo1.wmv),
which it makes in realtime, human speed. The "Albert Hubo" has
high quality video cameras embedded in the eyes, which allow it to
face-track and perform biometric ID. It is also set up for speech
interaction and for ongoing AI development. Photos can be seen at http://hansonrobotics.com/press.php
Hubo
with Einstein's head.
2. There is now a project to build a Philip K. Dick
android. This project also involves David
Hanson who will be doing the head for the android. Of course
Philip K. Dick was the famous sci-fi writer who wrote the book "Do
Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" (among others) which was turned
into the cult film called "Blade Runner" starring Harrison
Ford (1982). BTW, androids DO NOT dream of electric
sheep. This head won the 2005 AAAI first place prize for Open
Interaction, and appeared opposite to Marvin Minski in AI Magazine,
summer 2005. Video of this can be seen at: http://hansonrobotics.com/movies/sci_ch_NeXtFesT.asf,
and photos at http://hansonrobotics.com/press.php. The
personality for this robot was built in collaboration with Andrew Olney,
a PhD student at the University of Memphis.
3. David Hanson has now built another head! Wow! This one is called K-bot and it has 24
actuators. David is a grad student at UT Dallas. He also has
his own company called Human
Emulation Robotics. WOW - This guy is clearly one of the
top head builders in the WORLD. Here is an article
which appeared on MSNBC the other day.
Image courtesy of David Hanson and the University of Texas at Dallas
David also sent me some video clips which you will really enjoy.
Video1 (393KB)
Video2 (679KB)
Video3 (1051KB)
4. George York, president of YFX Studios sent me an email about his company. They build animatronic animals
and insects. And now they are building an animatronic
man. He is called Master Lee. They have a 3MB movie of the head
talking with facial expressions. And now he has a body! George says
he can move his hands and arms. Next they will try to make him walk.
Now they have built an 8
foot tall animatronic Giganopithecus for the San Diego Museum of Man.
It look very real! (* Updated 3/3/04 *)
 
5. Here is another head
project which YFX Studios has done for the University of California at San Diego
(UCSD). It looks really great too. This head has 9 DOF. The project is being
directed by Jochen Triesch. They are using the firefly digital cameras from Point Grey Research in Vancouver, BC. for eyes.
6. NASA now has an EAP (Electro-Active Polymer) head project. This is
a project funded by JPL in Pasadena, CA. The head was sculpted by and animated by David
Hanson.
 Lulabot by David Hanson of
UTD.
7. David Ng of Vancouver, BC, Canada has a really nice
animatronic head kit for sale now.
David's animatronic head.
This head has 16 servos which operate many
different facial actions.
See
all the details (including videos) here.
8. Fumio Hara of the
Science University of Tokyo has built a robotic head of a Japanese woman which is
controlled by 24 hydraulic cylinders which can change its facial expression to one of six
common human expressions. Black Ice has a very good article
about "Roberta". It took Hara 10 million yen and three years' work with the help
of his unpaid students to build Roberta. There are many people working in the Hara Lab
now. Here is a link to their members.
 55K
 46KB.
9. Hidetoshi Akasawa, who also works in the Hara Lab at the Science
University of Tokyo, has built another robotic head of a Japanese woman. His cost ONLY
$85,000. His "head" was featured in this month's Wired Magazine article about Androids
(Sept. 2000, pgs 252 - 272).
 48KB
10. The Science University of Tokyo has a
another face robot project called Saya. This robot is being built at the Intelligent Mechatronics Lab of the
Kobayashi Lab. This one is supposed to look like a nurse. It was shown at the
recent Robodex 2002 in Yokohama.
11. Carnegie Mellon University has developed a "talking head" called Doc
Beardsley. The head itself is animatronic and moves and changes expresion during its
conversations. It is backed up by an AI program which generates conversation. This
project has been sponsored by the Interactive Animatronic
Initiative. They now have added skin to Doc Beardsley. There are movies on this site too. (*
updated 08/01/02 *)
  
12. Intelligent Earth, a company located in Kirkcaldy,
Scotland, has built a robotic head
which they call Doki. It incorporates two cameras, two motion sensors, one chemical sensor, one
speaker and is awaiting the addition of two microphone 'ears'. Here is a
news article
from the BBC. The head will sell for £3000 -
£5000 depending on the options selected.
Doki
13. The C-Lab at the University of Paderborn (Germany) has built a head for simulating
emotions. Its called "Mexi" for Machine with emotionally extended intelligence.
Here is an article
in English and here is one in
German (search for "Roboterkopf mexi" and click on the link).
 
The picture on the right shows Dr. Heinrich von Pierer of Siemens (who is
funding the project) with German Chancellor Schroeder and Prof. Schulz (left to right).
14. Cynthia Breazeal at MIT (Cambridge, Mass) has built a robotic head too. It appears
that she has done it herself which is great accomplishment. Her project which is called Kismet is about 3 years old. It is
also part of the COG project.
 Kismet
- 19KB
15. Prof. Takanishi Atsuo of the Dept of Science and Technology of Waseda University in
Tokyo, Japan has a project called the Humanoid Cranium Project .
The head is capable of several different expressions.
 Humanoid Cranium
16. Hossein Mobahi
from the Azad University, Tehran-South Campus, Tehran, Iran has
developed an animatronic face. The face is comprised of eight
degrees of freedom. Its controllable features are eyes, eyebrows, jaw
and neck. Aryan's brain enables it to autonomously detect human face or
hands and to track them. Aryan can express its emotion in his face,
according to its perceived visual stimulation. The brain software runs
on a standard PC with a 200MHz Intel Pentium Processor and under Linux
OS. (* updated 4/27/05 *)
17. USC has a head project called MAVeric. Here is another link.
Maveric
18. MIT has another face project called the Humanoid
Face Project. Its head has FOUR eyes.
 It definitely has the ALIEN look.
(fixed link 3/3/04)
19. Mark Medonis sent me an email about an animatronic head he is working on. His robot
is called Maxwell. It does speech synthesis and lip sync at the same time. Wow! Mark has a
company called Medonis Engineering. He is now
offering Maxwell as an animatronic kit. See his site for details. He also offers
electronic components for robot builders - in fact I just bought one! Mark
sent me some new pix today.
 
 
20. Patrick M. Rael has built an animatronic
head as the first step of his android project. His android is called Robot Maxamilian
or R.Max for short. He also has web pages which tell how
you can duplicate his feat for about $600. His eyes pan and tilt and have video cameras
inside them.
R.Max's head
(51KB).
21. Chris Hillman has been working on a head for his android. It appears
that his android will be a large male. He has many other projects underway too.
 Image is 67KB
22. Jason Van Anden of Brooklyn,
NY has developed a Smile Project.
His project is called Neil. Neil can express various
emotions such as happiness or sadness. Jason has several video clips on
his site which you will enjoy.
Neil.
23. Matthew Walker and Peter S. Longyear from the UK have built an android head using
among other things, a set of animatronic eyes from Android World. His site is here.
 
Matthew Walker and Peter S. Longyear's head project.
Thanks for your support.
24. Paul Hopkins of Boneyard Bargains in Ontario, Canada is building an android head.
He is using a set of android eyes from Android World too.
Boneyard Bargains offers all kinds of horror props, models, and
animatronics.
Thanks for your support.
25. It seems that UCLA started an android
head project last fall. Prof. J.Best was looking for people to
help. They are going to build a head with video cameras for eyes, a mouth which can open
and close, and with face muscles.
26. The Robot Group of Austin
Texas has a head project which they call the Babbling
Head. The robot group is a group of artists and engineers who
enjoy robots. It was constructed by Brooks Coleman, Alex Iles, and Bill
Craig. 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 LED 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.
This robot is fitted with an exhibit controller board that operate a series of hobby servo motors that move the lips, eyeballs and neck areas.
A sound synthesizer provides the computer voice simulated speech that bring the Babbling Robot Head to life. Alex Iles was very instrumental
in developing and programming the exhibit controller for this piece. Bill
Craig assisted with programming and the speech synthesis.
Babble face.
27. MIT has another head
project which is called Macaco. It is part of the Humanoid
Robotics Group. Apparently it is being built by Artur Arsenio under the
supervision of lab director, Rodney Brooks.
MIT's Macaco.
28. Scott Barbiere has built a clever animatronic head which he calls the
Grim Reaper. He is using a set of animatronic
eyes from Android World (thanks for your support). Scott sent me a nice video of the
Grim Reaper in
action. (* NEW *)
29. Haskins Laboratory at Yale University has an interesting website discussing talking heads. It appears that
these heads will have faces which will move as the voice/mouth talks.
30. CMU has a new head project
called Joyce. They plan to add video cameras to the eyes
soon. She was designed for the class 16-199 Spring 2004.
Joyce was built by Erika and James
31. We are also building an android head here at Android World Inc. We have sculpted
Valerie's head out of oil-based clay and cast our molds in Ultracal30. The face will be
made from foam latex and will have cables embedded in it so that face muscles can be
operated from inside the head with RC-type servos. We plan to offer components of
the head or the full head as a kit for robotics laboratories to use as an AI teaching
tool.
Below is the head with the eyes
mounted in it. It also has the teeth mounted in the jaws and the lower jaw hinged to
the upper jaw. We have the molds for the face and head completed.
  
   
- Teeth: set of 28 adult-sized teeth
$100.
- Ears: foam latex ears, a pair for
$50.
- Eyes: set of gimbal mounted animatronic eyes.
$750.
- 1 set includes the following:
- 2 color video cameras (PC-53-XP from supercircuits)
- 12 V power supply to drive the cameras.
- 5 servos to control the eyes and eye lids.
- 9 V PS and battery pack to drive the servos.
- 1 servo controller by Scott Edwards Electronics
- Software to drive the servos
Would you like to build your own animatronic head? It
tough to get started because the hardest part has to be done
first. You need to sculpt a life-sized head and then make lots of
molds - which are a big pain. 8 molds are required for the 4 items
included in this package. We are now offering the skull in two parts
(front and back) and the beautiful silicone face also in two parts for
the low low price of $295. Simply mount the head and add
your animatronics to give you a quick and easy animatronic head
project. The skull parts are made of tough nearly unbreakable
plastic.
Valerie's Head
The face shown above still has
the flashing attached. You simply trim off the excess as you
wish. The face is life-size (5" wide by 8" tall).
The whole head is 12" tall. Rear skin section is not
shown but is included in the kit. Silicone face is easily
washable with soap and water. Use baby powder to reduce sticky
feel. Use Shin-etsu caulking compound to attach silicone.
Includes 2 pairs of silicone ears (2 small & 2 medium sized)
8 piece animatronic head
kit $295
Caucasian skin tone
Asian skin tone
African-American skin tone
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