- General
- Sumomo will run off a 3.3 volt system from a low drop regulator. Her servos will get power direct and unregulated from the batteries. This will allow them maximum force and reduce strain on the 3.3 regulator. Her batteries will be 4 AA cells arranged to produce a 6 volt supply. Idle, she'll be drawing about 30 mA assuming none of the devices' power management mechanisms are used. This will give her an idle battery life of approximately 110 hours (more than the length of the con at 100% usage duty cycle). The servo motors and the speech solenoid will decrease this time significantly (Worst case 30 minutes if every motor is seized and driven at 100% duty cycle.) Realistically, I expect to get about 8 hours of life out of her during reasonable duty cycle use.
- Speech
- The use of a Winbond 5008 single chip Voice Record and Playback device will suffice to create the desired ability to speak. By recording a set of Sumomo quotes from the TV audio soundtrack I can sufficiently reproduce sumomo's personality. Also, an accelerometer over range should cause her to scream, as it will help draw attention to when she's falling. Lastly, on power up she will play back the "Booting" sound from the show to add to the realism.
- Movement
- Her legs will move on their own for their part of the balancing act but will also be somewhat controllable (The control will act as a bias to her balance control system, so as long as the control doesn't interfere with her current balance, her legs will move as expected, giving a bit of a "Window" to work in.) She will also have a solenoid driven mouth which will be connected via a peak finder and buffer amp to the chipset output. She will also have eyelids with a draw string routed through an eyelet in her head to the ends of her eyelids powered by a solenoid. They'll be manually controllable, as well as operating on their own in a generally natural way. As for fully user controlled actions her head will rotate to match a potentiometer.
- Manual Trigger
- Sumomo will be given a 6 button "Animate" controller. This controller will be useful for everything ranging from controlling head turn to eyelids to making her speak. It will be constructed out of a set of pushbuttons and will be mounted in a separate box. The control wire will run through my clothing to the doll on my shoulder.
- Automatic Trigger
- Due to size considerations, this feature will not be included immediately, but solder points will be added both at digital inputs and at analog inputs to allow for this to be added as a daughter board at a later date.
- Balance
- Sumomo will be constructed with an AX330 acceleration sensor board from Spark Fun Electronics. The balance control system will use weighted feet to manage placement and will use a feedback system. The underlying principle will be a standard control system trying to hold the gravity vector pointing straight down the Z axis. Trimming data from the motor control software will bias the result and allow for the legs to be somewhat controlled at a reduction of stability, both balance wise, as well as control stability. This may work to her advantage though as it may cause a low frequency resonance in her leg controls which will allow her to "rock" back and forth. Some tinkering with feedback coefficients may be done to try to make the possible. (It is reasonable to suggest that I will seek to setup 2 set of them. One stable, and one oscillatory.) Depending on time and resources, software may be written to allow the balance direction to be selectable to allow her to "lean".
- Exterior
- Sumomo's exterior will be made of thin foam plates/tubing and then she will be dressed in clothes suitable to her on screen appearance. Her body's main supports will be made of legos and will act as the attached endoskeleton for the control servos to bind to. The whole device will be glued together using super glue and modeling glue as is appropriate for the materials involved.
Accessed: 11:52:27 9/10/10 MST Last Update: 8:49:36 6/12/06 MST