it's that time of year again..... yep, it's time to make TonyBot!

What usually happens around this time of year is that I get an escape from the daily work/work life demands & I remember the things that "I" want to spend my time working on. Sounds odd, doesn't it? "Isn't that what your 'free time' is for?".  LOL. you funny.  you no work for the company I work for. They own your soul & you have to worship the god of commerce, else they throw you to the pit of redundancy and no-one wants that now you've "got a short runway" in a post-50yr old life span.

Wow, that digressed quick - I must stop watching Geoff buys cars on YouTube, he has a lot of answer for :-)

So, back to the point - robots!  yes, I've been faffing about with robots in one shape or form since about, well, since I can remember really, dabbed a bit in the early 90's, mid-90's, then again in early/mid 2000's & then when OOPIC came out, I dabbled there & then the Arduino early days.  Did a load of stuff with ROS (Robotic Operating System), visited / met lots of people making real robots, got distracted by day work/work, dabbled a bit more, built things, put them on shelves, came back to the 5+yrs later, move onto the latest tech. repeat. repeat. repeat.  & yep, you guessed it, I'm about to repeat it again.

However, I'm going to change the parameters a bit this time.  The old saying about repeating the same thing again & again & expecting a different outcome results in madness (or is madness?), well, the technology has moved on yet again - but some of the right people have been involved with it.

Just for giggles - here is a video I found, selling "Tonybot".  now...I believe I built & coded one like this, oh, it has to be around 20years ago now, so back in 2002-2003-ish, it was fun figuring out how to get all the servo's to work together, in fact 90% of the work was getting the controller code to work the servo's, get feedback & act on that feedback (rinse & repeat).  I do have memories of LOUD & noisy servo's & the faint whiff of burning electrical motors - oh & batteries were HUGE back then, so no real mobility.

Anyway, leaving this here as a 'simple starter' - if you are someone who has never engineered or built something like this YOURSELF, do not judge, yes, you may look & say, "pffhhh..... childish, pathetic, it's no Boston Dynamics, is it?".... I challenge you, go make one yourself, from scratch, don't go cheating and buying a kit, or copying & pasting code from stackoverflow / chatGPT, do it ALL yourself.  Then you will have an understanding & appreciation & respect for what it takes.  Why?  well, once you've done that, you really respect what has been achieve by other people.

For instance, it's not simple to make something walk on 2 legs, with 2 feet:

I know I'll get it in the ear that I'm being anti-Gen Z (again), however, this time, I am not - I am more anti-lazy-b'stard.  There is a huge pocket of people that our society has created (thanks Apple), that are "users", they are not creators or innovators, they are straight out "users" and sadly, they seem to have an opinion & influence on the rest of society.

"Why so bitter, Tony?" - well, simple.  I wanted to have a flying car by now.  I wanted to have a robot helper / assistant in my home helping me with daily tasks.  Not some cheap gimmick that is a glorified speaker & microphone that can turn lights on & off, play a song, set an alarm of buy me crap, I can still do all that myself, what I wanted to have by now is a cool / proper robot that can help me in the kitchen, the living room, the garage, the bathroom (not what you think) and help with the garden too - in fact, that is where I started back in the 2000s, wanting to build a GardenBot (ala "Silent Running" style) - not a roomba that runs on grass instead of carpet, a proper GardenBot, one that can trim bushes, identify what is a flower, flower stem, rose, rose stem from a weed.  That is the future I was sold.  It is 2023 goddamit & we're still navel gazing and getting excited that we can record 15-sec videos and share them with other people (I was building that capability for companies back in 2001!).  basically, we've stalled. stagnated. paused. and, y'know time marches on.  I have just recently injured my elbow/arm.  It's the one I need to do 75% of my daily tasks, this got me thinking.  Okay, if I get it removed, it'll be cool, I'll get a prosthetic arm, I'll be semi-cyberpunk.  However, it'll literally cost me an arm (and a leg) as I'm over the certain demographic age, so I'd have to sell something major in order to fund it.  This would then allow me to continue with my daily life.  However, this is an extreme example.  I would much prefer to have a personal robot that can do the things I can no longer do, due to that injury.  I need to work on my kustom car in the garage, that requires being able to grip and hold the pressure - same a gardening, having a robot arm will help with that a lot - but wouldn't it be great if there was a robot pal to help you do that.

I like these, even if they do resemble a bunch of waddling ducks.

I mean, it's not like we haven't got all the technology now - we do.  If you list out all of the components that are required, from the hardware through into the software, we actually DO have everything that is needed - however, corporations don't want to (1) take the risk (2) invest such huge amounts on a gamble (think of how many crap sequel movies keep coming out, or Marvel one's, no-one wants to take a risk on something new, same issue here), (3) be the first to fail &/or get into a lawsuit area.  Yes, yes, yes, I know about TESLA-bot, great, but the point about that isn't to help with the above, it's about Industrial usage, same with Amazon - they have bigger visions.  Are you going to send humans to Mars? no,you'll send robots that can be controlled by humans to perform the human-esque tasks first & then when humans eventually arrive they can take over.  Why then make the robots human-esque? because of that hand-over, if you make the robots too unique for each task, you'll have a dependency on them afterwards & well, robots are expensive, humans are cheap.  You know Mars is going to be a sh!tshow when it happens, it'll be worse then going back to the Victorian class era.  anyway, digressed again :-)

The Industrial robot market has a LOT of rules & regulations, for a reason, they mostly have niche tasks with specific regulations - the assessors can govern & control / manage those robots nicely.  What they do not have is a blend of those tasks, rules, regulations, governance, control/management - because it is too vast an area to cover, it tips the balance of effort versus financial return.  There you go, about 1000 words to say that last sentence.  It's all about money.  Which is a shame & is annoying, why can't we remove money from the equation?  We should do / work on things to help human-kind, not grant more fake-worth to individuals who don't really need it.  Sadly, I do actually believe society has lost that battle.  Money will destroy human-kind, the only glimmer of hope is that the next time around, maybe, just maybe, religion & money is left out & let's see how far we get as a species then.

Talking of positivism, this is the real reason for posting here.  

This is DISNEY Entertainment, they have spent 3-years looking into making robots.  Did they use any of the OOTB Industrial robot things? yes, but they still needed to create & innovate a load of things themselves - THAT tells you that there is a blocker / something wrong with the industry as a whole.  However, Disney are looking at this in a different way - they are looking at this as "Entertainment robots".  Robots that can freely walk around the theme parks, interact with children, pose for selfies, engage in a limited way and just generally bring that "magic & sparkle" to childrens lives - maybe it will inspire enough children to then "want to do something", something more than be a "user", but build their own robot, or take an already existing robot & look at tweaking it / enhancing it / extending it to do the next generation of things.

That's a world I would like to see.  That is the world I would like today.  I like the fact that James has taken this challenge on and, like myself, wants to do something here.  However, he gets funded / sponsored by his YouTube channel & can get time to focus on this, sadly, that is where I fall down, but I shall stand on his shoulders and see what I can do extra.

So, whilst a LOT of people are doing the commercial thing over the next few weeks, I'll take advantage of this time to see "what I can do" to help accelerate that Robot world of wonder, even if it is just getting some 3D printed parts made to start to make the journey - and whilst waiting for them to print, get the K9 robots I hacked together earlier in the year, operational & working from a software perspective.  The hardware is already there, I just need to do the coding part.

Roll on 2024.

...or maybe even walk?!

p.s. those actuators that James uses are $420 EACH - I don't have $2000 just lying around to fund this, time to lookup some cheaper alternatives that can "nearly" do the same thing, but stay within a reasonable price bracket.