Babbling Robot Head is perhaps one of the finest examples of our group's efforts to meld art and technology. It is certainly one of the classiest. BrooksColeman who is a genius at wood crafting, designed and crafted the various woods that went into this piece. The wood elements are as diverse and rich as purple heart wood and oak and as raw as tanzania root. The organic brain in this robot is a piece a tanzania root that Brooks filed and fitted perfectly to this piece. The rawness and natural ridges of the wood root give it a very natural organic looking brain. The base of the piece is purple heart wood and the neck and collar bones are pow amavia woods.
Brooks who also does metal forging tailored the metal nose and half head piece for Babbling Head while Laurie Davis forged the eyes. The eyeballs are hammered silver with l.e.d. lights illuminating the iris centers. The eyeballs are also servo controlled and capable of rolling. The neck and the lips are made of soft plastic for mobility. The lips are molded black silicon and the neck pipe piece is actually a dryer vent pipe.
This robot is fitted with a Mini SSC II board that operates a series of hobby servo motors that move the lips, eyeballs and neck areas. The DecTalk provides the computer voice that brings the Babbling Robot Head to life. AlexIles was very instrumental in developing and programming the original exhibit controller for this piece. BillCraig assisted with the original programming and the speech synthesis. Later, EricLundquist added real-time speech synchronization with the DecTalk.
The Babbling Head is currently being integrated into the RobotBrain project.
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Original web page link here
The Babbling Head perched upon the RobotBrain 
http://www.cafeshops.com/morebrooks6
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BBC News
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(last modified 2007-04-05 14:35:39)