I think the InMoov design would benefit from a "tilt-able" kinect. The kinect comes with its own tiltable stand, but controlling this through the kinect driver is very problematic.

We need a single servo - tilt gimbal for the kinect.  
The kinect is the most powerful sensor we have, but we can not look down and see what is in front of us !

Would it be possible to design a holder in InMoov such that we can tilt it up and down with nothing to obscure its camera - the wider the range the better.  Pan would be nice too, but I'm assuming we'll let the torso twisting take care of that.

It looks like Adolph is going to try to design the kinect in the head which might be a good solution - I thought about this in the past and how it might look like a Daft Punk helmet :D (I don't know about how low the head can tilt - not having a fully built InMoov head)

Do to driver / software issues - the Kinect base motor can not be controlled through the kinect usb cable - however I think it would be possible to control through an Arduino & hbridge

Here are the tilt ranges of the kinect's base

Here are some teardown references

I can see the motor is a regular small dc brushed with a wormdrive

"IF" your design utilizes this base - a small H-bridge circuit & 2 Arduino pins could be used for control.  It "might" be possible to trace back the circuit to the H-bridge on the kinect (you can be guaranteed one is there) then possibly tapping off the digital control lines - this would save you from buying an H-bridge but it means more disassembly, and the trouble of finding the H-bridge on the circuit board, and the possiblity of turning the kinect into a brick.

If you use a Servo - its just 1 more servo and a single pin for control

harland

10 years 1 month ago

I am not sure what Gael is doing for the rest of the stomach parts???

upper stomach moves left and right sorta up/down

middle stomach  maybe turns????

bottom stomach maybe bends up/down or tills forward/backward????  this would point the kinect down and we wouldn't have to rebuild where it now lives

john

GroG

10 years 1 month ago

Didn't know it was going to go forward - ya its a possible solution if thats the plan - although there would be some advantages to tilt the kinect where it is, instead of moving the entire body

Cix

10 years 1 month ago

Just as brainstorming, what if we mount a series of mirrors in front of ir projector and ir camera? The mirrors should act as a periscope and the kinect have to shift back (yes I know, this requires a little stomach reengineering). At this point a servo should be move the mirrors orientation.... I said a nonsense ? :-)

Yes a mirror would work, and your right there would be re-work to move the kinect back, and probably shift it so its point up 45 degrees.  Then a mirror could be placed above and that moved by a servo.

I think it would require more re-work, than tilting the kinect sensor.  But a good idea if the kinect was too heavy, fortunately its not.  All are good ideas - this is how laser displays work with lasers & galvometers attached to mirrors.

Also you would need to find a mirror that was highly reflective to visible light AND IR ..  they are not always the same material :)

I'd think you'd want to use front surface mirrors to avoid the diffractions caused by the glass being in front of a normal mirror's sliver surface.  You can get front surface mirrors out of laser printers or online.  I've heard our laser guru at the lab say that some DIYers use hard drive platters as mirrors in laser cutters because they're polished like a mirror finish and you can cut several mirrors out of a single platter.  I have a boatload of hard drive platters from drives I've scrapped for various reasons over the years. They're so shiny I just can't bring myself to throwing them away.  :)