I'm going to start on a huge project soon. I'm a little lost on how to get started. I'm hoping someone here (awesome forums by the way) can lend me a hand, be it robotic or otherwise.
I'm going to make a robotic head. It will have all of the facial movements of a human, as well as, rotation of the neck. I'm really not too worried about this part.
I am trying to figure out what I need for the brain and the controllers. I will write the code in Python (or maybe a slight variation of it, depending on what I come across). It should be very processor heavy. It will have a ton of features that will take me a long time to make. Some of these features include, voice and facial recognition, and speaking through "text to speak". I will most likely have to build my own phoneme generator and use that to control the facial features. The moving parts in the face will include: 3 vertical sliders for each eyebrow, possibly one vertical slider for the forehead, one for each cheeks, 4 vertical and horizontal sliders for each lip (top and bottom), and a jawbone. (This is not final, but I think I covered my bases.)
This may not sound like much (probably because I'm being very vague about it), but there will be a lot of work on the programming side of it.
I'm trying to devise a way for better AI interaction. The input that the bot receives will be filtered through a grammar system in a way that it can dissect a sentence and have, a somewhat, intelligent feedback. Although this is sort of an ultimate goal, it is not priority. I do however like to think ahead and I will need the capacity and power.
Also, does anyone know of a way of doing/testing robots in a virtual or simulated manner? I would rather test on the computer as much as possible, I think it would be a lot cleaner and easier to debug.
Thanks for your help.
