AIDA Construction

[Eric Hunting]

Coming out of a rough winter (a slow-cooking power strip with a fused breaker was triggering bronchitis over and over...) and trying to get back in the loop, I have a couple of questions I was wondering if any readers here could help with. I've been exploring some small projects to help get my robotics and electronics skills back up to speed and have become particularly interested in this;

http://robotic.media.mit.edu/projects/robots/aida/overview/overview.html

The application of a driving assistant seems dubious to me, but I'm interested in this head design as a potentially very economical expression interface, compared to the elaborate animatronics most of these projects use. I've learned that it is based on a rear-projection system using an off-the-shelf Pico-P laser projector and the 'neck' system--a 4 or 5 DOF arm--seems pretty straightforward and could probably even be improved on with some of the newer serial bus servo and modular mounts turning up with hobby robots. But the head shell/dome is a puzzle. I can't determine how it was made and what it was made from and if that's going to be something I could realistically make or have made. This second-generation head is particularly puzzling as its using a glossy black material that is highly transmissive with rear projection. I've been unable to get anyone at the Personal Robotics Lab to respond to email so I was wondering if anyone here has more knowledge about this project or this type of rear projection material. 

I've become rather curious recently about the concept and history of the personal robot and why, being born as a product concept at about the same time as the personal computer, from the same tech sub-culture, and equally as nebulous at the time, it never really got past the Heathkit Hero. Robotics generally hasn't gotten past the stage, as with the early personal computer, of relying on the repurposing of components and technology developed mostly for other applications and markets (computing, RC modeling, etc.) rather than realizing a components ecology truly of its own. It was by no means clear sailing for the PC, but it eventually found its role in the culture. The personal robot never did and, until revived in this new contemporary context of 'emotional utility' as explored at MIT, had become as anachronistic as the 'home computer'. It seems the concept became stuck on an erroneous early notion of the personal robot as successor to the personal computer--a speech-driven self-mobile PC that follows you around you're (presumably vast and stairs-free) home. At the time the popular culture was still pretty convinced, by portrayals in media, that the future of personal computing was indeed machines that talked to you and this might have seemed a logical strategy for overcoming the learning curve of early computing, though the technology for that simply didn't work at the time and the idea proved divergent from the actual trends in technology revolving largely around visual media, entertainment, personal communications, and portability. Hampered by slow progress in electromechanical technology, the modest-cost robot began--and remains--largely incapable of manipulating things in the human environment and never realized its own succession of 'killer apps' like that which (with the help of a certain little plumber in a red suit from Japan) pulled the personal computer out of the office and into mainstream culture while driving the rapid advance of its key supporting technologies. Bah. The stuff that fills your head when it's snowing outside in the desert...

Also, I'm still looking for a cheap and simple (hopefully off-the-shelf) tool for drilling precision holes for Grid Beam parts with a low-cost drill press. Folks in the Open Equipment forum offered some good feedback about this, but the idea of making a specialized positioning system for this when I'm not going to be using it all the time seems a bit much. I just need something better than a crudely made wooden jig that I can use as needed and easily take from place to place. 

Thanks.