Dynamic Animatronic Vehicular Entity (AKA: Cyber-Dave) |
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2006 |
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| December (2nd) | Unfortunately we didn't make it to
the Colchester Institute show due to various team commitments, but maybe
we can get there next year.
Still not much to report just yet, but we've started work on the neck mechanism so it may not be long now before we can get the head in place. We tidied up the old prototype arm assembly last week and got it out for a demo run at our office Christmas party - yes, an early party! It seemed to go down well and there's a video on the downloads page you can have a look at I'll put some more progress photos up as soon as the neck mech is completed. |
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| September | It's been a very long time since
the last entry but, due to various circumstances, work on DAVE has been
on hold for the past few months. To the people who've been
visiting the site regularly - thanks for hanging in there!
The news is that three of the team are now working at the same premises and DAVE will be joining us there. That gives us the opportunity to get things moving again and pick up where we left off. We've been asked to take DAVE along to Robot Chariots 2006 at Colchester Institute on the 7th October. This is an engineering-based event for teams of youngsters, and DAVE will be one of the attractions on display throughout the day. He won't be moving yet, but the kids can meet him and see what we've been up to for the past couple of years! I'll let you know how it goes. |
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| April (23rd) | DAVE made his first public
appearance today at the Manningtree High School vehicle show. We
hadn't been able to get anything working that we could demonstrate in
time, but at least we could show what we've got so far, and the feedback
was quite encouraging. This was a regular event for our RW machines which we have been supportiing for a few years now. Apart from DAVE, we had Chaos II and Steely there, plus our prototype arm and Ian's 'Mincer' walker. We were also joined by Gilbert and Robert from the Iron Awe team, Georje and Keith with Kat, John and Tracey with Ka-Pow and Ian Inglis with some of his amazing menagerie of robots. Unfortunately the weather kept us all indoors with static displays only, but a good time was had by all none the less.
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| April (2nd) |  Here's
another picture of the wiring in progress, looking a bit busier
now. Also, George has started on the neck assembly and here's a
shot of the baseplate fitted to the top of the spine.
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| March |  We've
sourced some nice flexible wire and some suitable connectors, so I've
made a start on the wiring. Working out how to route the wires
around the shoulder joints is an interesting problem! Everyone who
builds an android must have pretty much the same things to think
about. Here's what it looks like so far. John. |
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| January | It's been a while now since an
update, so I thought I'd better write something.
The year has been a busy one so far with three of the team starting new jobs. As a consequence, our energies have been temporarily diverted into making a living rather than spending too much time on DAVE. Even so, Ian has managed to build the arm controller boards and George has been working on the control software and evaluating the computers he wants to use, which are now on order.
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All text and images © the DAVE project team 2004 |
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I've
done some work restyling the metalwork for the neck mounting, and this
will bring the head lower down to the shoulders and give a more
proportioned look. I've also started going over the arms doing a
'final fix' which involves Loctite-ing and tightening all the dozens of
screws. Not a very exciting job perhaps, but another one which I
can tick off my list.