Over week 14 Alex completed assembling Tom and over the last weekend we got Tom to be moving and celebrated his birthday as he came alive on 23 April morning at 4:00 am. We were also able to set up the electrical panel and power the 3 functions of Tom using it. Please find the attached video for when Tom came alive first.
While doing these tests we found an idea about the speed of the animations and since the speed was high it started impacting Tom. Therefore we then spent our week in figuring out how to calculate the desired speeds for Tom so that it does overload the rig. We also worked on beginning to test the electrical panel and we found some issues with the ultramotion motors as we had it not be compatible with the fuses that we had so we started trouble shooting those problems.
While we were testing on the animations for Tom we also started looking up at the soft goods for Tom which is his body and skin. We had some professionals come in and look at him to give us an idea about how we can refurbish Tom and also how robust his skin is as one of the major goals for our project is to deliver a robust Tom which will last for more than 5 years. We then started working on researching different techniques that can be used to refurbish him and worked with the professionals to set up a schedule so that they can help us in refurbishing him which will help us focus on testing the rig and since the refurbishing will be done by professionals it will make Tom more robust and long lasting.
We also started working on modifying the animations and after discussing with Tim we decided to do some motion tests on Tom so that it can give us an idea about the speeds and the accelerations for each function setting the minimum limit below which we are not supposed to go so that the animations being done don’t have a negative impact on the rig.
We also started working on our documentation individually describing each pipeline in detail so that in case there is future semester project then anyone can refer those documents and use them to operate, animate and work with Tom. Also we worked on preparing documents and videos for maintenance like changing a servo on the mechanical rig for Tom or working with the electrical panel.