28.5.15

Thesis:

Progression with the thesis is coming on well. I have now finished writing up the results of my pilot study and analysing the outcomes for fruition in the main study. I feel that I am in a comfortable place with my writing so I will aim to concentrate a little more on the development on the animatronic system of the next few weeks.

Build:

The mouth, lip and tongue mechanisms are now fully connected to servos and I have tested individually to monitor performance and determine any issues that may occur when adding the external silicone skin to the project later on in the build. I used aluminium bars and milliput resin to form the pulley system for the lips, I wanted to try this out as it would give a little extra movement in the contraction of the mechanism. I am very happy with the results of this and it produces a smooth and even pull. 

Feelings: I feel very happy with the current situation of both projects, and I will be looking at advancing the progress of the animatronic model to equal the progression of my thesis.

Evaluation: This session has proved a very interesting experience as it has expressed the full functions of the lips and mouth in unison and I will be aiming to get a video up of this shortly.

Analysis: I have been working extremely hard on progressing my thesis and I feel that once I can get that fully established I can put all my efforts into the robot and really get that polished and bring it to life.

Conclusion: In conclusion this has been a very progressive session and I am very happy with the current state and situation of the project.

Action Plan: I have been considering building a set of eyes for the character, I will look at putting together a quick prototype of this mechanism for the next session.  

5.5.15

Thesis:

I have now finished my literature review chapter after adding additional sub chapter introductions and conclusions as suggested in my last supervision meeting. I have currently written 500 words of my introduction that covers the topic area to be covered, I now need to add my aims and objectives to this and the importance of empirical research when considering my area of research. I am going to be concentrating my efforts on completing this chapter over then next two days for online supervision log submission. I have also achieved the number of participant responses that I require for my methodology and results chapters. These will be the next chapters I tackle and I will start doing that next week starting with the deconstruction and analysis of my pilot study.

Build:

The build has come on in leaps and bounds over the past few weeks, firstly the lip mechanism is fully operational and works on a push pull rob system constructed of wound metal wire that projects the lip formation back and fourth through plastic tubing. I have also replaced the metal wire in the tongue rig with tri-bind 100lb fishing wire that has a nanoweb coating. This material is really strong and allows the mechanism the bend further around adding further expression to the character. The wire for the lips and the rod mechanisms are from an old set of bass guitar strings I had saved over a year ago, to attach the bottom and top lip wires to the model I used black milliput and 90 metal joints. The loops of the pulleys are more from simply bending the ends of the guitar stings into a circle and sealing them together using heat-shrink.

I have also been working with my supervisor to put together the scripture for the control system using the prototype I produced last month. This session confirmed the accuracy of the device which was a major concern of mine at the start of the project. So now I am very happy with how this system will perform. 

Feelings: I am really pleased with how things are progressing, I will order some new servos when I get paid so I can start looking at how the system will perform under control. 

Evaluation: The lips function really smoothly and the response from manually operating them without the motors indicate that the lips with function very well under servo control.

I will order some servos and hopefully get things moving quickly over the next week or so. The lips will operate with the jaw like my other project using the audio trigger. I will make some simple alterations to this code to accommodate the extra servos that I am using in this project.

Analysis.

The current position of the project makes sense as far as how it relates to the theoretical work. Both of these elements seem to really work well together and are becoming tighter as the project progresses. I am also happy with how smoothly things seem to be going at the moment, I know one should never say such things but if things continue on this path I really think there will be something of worth at the end of the process.

Conclusion.

In conclusion this session has been a very interesting one as far as progression, exploration and innovation. I really like using latex silicone as it can be pigmented really easily and is really responsive like flesh. I can see why it is so widely used in the animatronics industry and I really want to explore this material myself and maybe put together some potential new elements using this material.