Giant Emoji

Created on 13 Oct 2018

An apparatus to mimic and present facial expression

Our facial expressions, no matter innate or voluntary, carry our deepest emotion and best selves we want others to know. In this project, we are going to demonstrate the aesthetic value of our facial expressions using robotics: to capture people's facial expressions through computer vision and magnify them on a robotic emoji.

@ruohaig

Ruohai Ge

@fyan1

Fan Yan

@yishunz

Yishun Zhou

Part Cost Quantity Total
Nema 23 CNC Stepper Motor 2.8A 178.5oz.in/1.26Nm $26.00 2 $52.00
Step Motor with huge torque to control the jaw of the emoji
ARDUINO UNO R3 [A000066] without Expression Installation $21.21 2 $42.42
Used to control motors and servos and communicate with computer
Inovat 100-240V to 24V 2A Switching AC/DC Power Adapter $8.99 1 $8.99
Voltage adapter
Micro Maestro 6-Channel USB Servo Controller (Assembled) $19.95 1 $19.95
Used to control massive amount of servos and motors
LewanSoul LD-27MG Full Metal Gear Standard Digital Servo $17.49 5 $87.45
Good quality motor in case torque is not enough
Miuzei 10 Pcs MG996R Servo Motor Metal Gear Torque Digital Motor Kit $45.99 1 $45.99
Motor used to control normal part
T-Slotted Framing Single Rail, Silver, 1" High x 1" Wide, Solid (6ft) $17.68 1 $17.68
T-Slotted Framing Single Rail, Silver, 1" High x 1" Wide, Solid (6ft)
MYSWEETY TB6600 4A 9-42V Stepper Motor Driver CNC Controller $14.39 1 $14.39
Step Motor Driver
Chanzon DC Power Connector $6.99 1 $6.99
Connect Motor to arduino
Project Totals: 15 $295.86
Track 1 Base Budget: $250.00
Preferred Vendor Budget Bonus: $50.00
Remaining Budget: $4.14
Fan Yan 16 Jan 2019, 1:33 a.m. EST
1/14 Mon 😨->😀 On Sunday when we marked the first footprints on Hamerschlag Drive, we knew that winter’s coming. Truly, as we are hustling for build 18, there comes the Rube Goldberg machine… and 2/3 of us are in intro to robotics… But we completed our first hacking day with good progress: My teammate finished the python code using opencv & dlib. It takes in real-time facial expressions and outputs coordinates of facial landmarks. We designed the front face and cut it out of a 24”*36”*3/8” piece of wood at fablab.
Fan Yan 16 Jan 2019, 1:46 a.m. EST
1/15 Tue 😌->😯 The kind of silicone rubber we chose (00-30 Platinum Silicone) takes 4 hours to cure, so the cost of any mistake can be huge. We spent 8 hours on the silicone rubber parts. Luckily they turned out to be strong enough. Eyelids are sent to the print line and circuit diagram is done. We are going to have a harsh battle with data & 14 servos… tomorrow.
Ruohai Ge 18 Jan 2019, 2:18 p.m. EST
We build the Arduino and Servo system. We use the Arduino Mega to control 8 servos and one step motors. 8 servos used to control the eyeball, eyebrow, and eyes. The step motor is used to control mouth. We use Pyserial to send data between Python and Arduino. It also contains an easy but useful interface that help users to use it