Hello again!

We apologize once again for the delay in updating our Website, though we have
valid reasons for this delay. Terry has been working on rebuilding the porch on
his house, Martin has been busy working off-shore and Kenney has been busy with
all manner of Movie work, but the main reason for the lack of update is that our
webmaster Simon.

Simon recently got married and they had thier honeymoon in Tunisia, along with
that, a new house that he and his wife had completely gutted and rebuilt!

All this has gone on and we have still had time to do J5 work, even if we had not
been able to update the website.

First on the J5 project, as we mentioned in the last update, the Cradle Base
needed a few redesigns to correct weaknesses found during last years prototype
testing, the Lower Torso also required strengthening. We can let you know that
all the required changes are completed, just a few parts left for Simon to ship
from the UK over to USA for the American half of the Team.

Simon has also been working on making a new prototype console covering for J5.
This is the cover for the Lower Torso, where the blue door opens for the LCD
screen. The prototype, (there are now pics in the gallery) is the second one
made as the first design did not look or fit well. It is not yet decided wether
the stainless steel console will be used in the final Design, as a fibreglass
casting or an aluminium sheet metal one may also be fabricated. Once a final
material has been decided on for this component, then we can go about finishing
its design, add the swing open door and detail parts.

Another little project, Simon has been working on is a Stainless Steel &
Aluminium prototype of the head. There are pictures already of the sheetmetal
head test that Simon made, but now he has remade it with more thought in the
design, and its coming along well. Pictures of its current progress are online
now, with more to follow. Please note though, that this is not the final design,
but just one that Simon has designed for testing purposes.

The designing of J5 has also moved on. More designs for the head and its
internals have been cadded and thats not too far off complete now. The designs of
the neck, with the hydraulic cylinders is finished too. We`re planning to have
all these cads fully ready in the next few weeks. When all cads are ready, we`ll
start to Fabricate final parts. We are hoping to have a full "protoype-mockup" of
the head in the next few months. We`ll have to see - watch this space!

Mini J5 has also been brought out of the cupboard again with a few more designs
sketched out by Simon. He is working bit by bit on refining designs of the track
units and the cradle base and the way that they interact with the lower torso.
Its planned for more parts to be made later in the year.

As a team, we are also finalizing the control and functionality of J5. Servo &
motor controllers, computers, sensors & feedback and other electronics. It is not
yet 100% decided exactly how we want J5 to be controlled, currently it is a mix
of full radio control, with some autonomous subroutine programs and features.
Things like how much will J5 be able to do `on its own is not only a question of
what we can get it to do, but what we dont want it to do autonomously due to
safety reasons.

One other bit of J5 development - The "Lip-Lights" - J5`s mouth if you will, has
been made!, We designed the PCB`s for the Lights themself and Terry custom
designed the Electronic driver PCB. The designs took a lot of
Prototyping,research,simulations, and rigourous testing, as well as designing the
PCB layouts, but all that hard work has paid off - they are of professional
materials, operationally perfect, color matched LED's and 100% screen accurate!

The one unknown for many years due to some critical missing documentation "Even
to us" was the "exact" sequencing of these lights. We had prevously made our best
quess of the exact lighting sequences, which as it turned out was wildly
incorrect! While we cannot get into any specific details, The article in the
November 2008 issue of "Robot Magazine" has opened a few doors for us which gives
us access to information on J5 we have not had since the original trip to
document J5 in 2004. A Picture of the new Lip Light system is now in the
gallery. The Prototyping, Development and Fabrication costs of this small
electronics system alone ran into many thousands of dollars and many hundreds of
hours of work. Just one Lip-Light assembly takes Terry over 9 hours to fully
assemble.

 

Thanks,

The Team.