Bones' Terminator style Robot (page 1)

*NEW* AVI movie showing 3d model in 360 degrees  Bones: Here’s what I’ve done so far. Every thing is a prototype just to test sizing and workability. The hand The hand was made from mostly components from a hobby shop. The fingers are made from 5mm aluminum tubing and the hinges are from R/C planes for the rudders etc. Even the cable is control cable from the hobby shop used in R/C planes. Excellent, because of the size (really small). I’m still working on the thumb. As you can see in the pictures how the cables are mounted. This allows with one pull of the cable that the whole finger can bend. On a human hand each joint has it’s own muscle. In my case the joint near the tip of the finger will be using the same cable as the second joint to save on servos. At the moment there will be 12 servos not including moving the fingers side to side. At $15 for the normal sized servos I’m looking at $180 just to do the fingers and thumb using 12 axes of motion out of the 24 in a human hand. The whole problem is space (and cost). Trying to fit 24 servos into the forearm unless you go to mini servos or air muscles like the Shadow Robot Company’s hand. http://www.shadow.org.uk/products/newhand.shtml . Download the PDF. Check out the other stuff on the site. The air muscles are great. But more of this later.   The Head The head is make from wood and will have full up and down eye movement. The eyes are from very large dolls. I know a guy who’s a doll doctor. The final design will have new eyes from acrylic with mini colour cameras build in. The jaw is controlled by servos and so are the eyes.   The Arm All the servos for the hand will be mounted in the forearm and a low-geared motor or large servo to rotate the forearm. The elbow joint needs some rework. The lifting motion for the elbow will be air muscles. In the top of the arm there will be another low-geared motor or large servo to rotate the upper arm. The shoulder is lifted by air muscles again and the rotation will either be motor or even air muscle.   Still designing   The Shoulder Still looking at what type of joint I’m using. Whether it is a fixed shoulder, Only up and down movement for shrugging (see terminator body photo) or a human like shoulder with full movement up and down, back and forward. It will have to use tie rod ends to allow the movement. Something like wishbone suspension on car but can move back and forward. Probably use something like a windscreen type motors in the body with universal joints going out to the shoulder.   The Spine Will use metal rings with rubber or nylon in-between. Same deal as a normal spine having the data coming out from the spine.   The legs There aren’t any. When someone brings out biped balance in a chip I will add them. It will be tracks from the waist down. In the base unit there will be the drive motors, batteries, air compressor, air storage tank, the brain, all the air solenoid valves etc. The track design is off the T-34 tank. Here is a site will all the spec you need for track of that type and even CAD designs. http://www.gjames.com.au/chris/t34/   The Brain and control system. Will be a Pentium 4 1.7GHz PC. Running windows XP at the moment until I learn Linux. The control system through out the body will be using PIC microcontrollers in each area to run those systems. These units will take the load off the main CPU and can be flash updated for upgrades without removal.