Sylvie 2021 is an open source humanoid robotics project whose mission is to bring the Personal Robot Companion to every home and every developer's garage. Think HRP-4C at one-fiftieth (1/50) of the cost.
It seeks to revolutionize the fields of animatronics and artificial intelligence, as well as push the boundaries of what is mechanically possible with hobby-grade 3d printed parts.
Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cM-MSwtNQfE
Let's talk about sex robots. While Sylvie is technically speaking not a sex robot, sex robots are in fact Personal Robot Companions.
The only problem with sex robots as we know them is that, for all those pounds of pricey platinum silicone, you're getting little value in terms of actual humanity.
Sex Robot manufacturers aren't stupid, however. They're already trying to incorporate some serious machinery and AI into their models. But their target audience remains the same: The wealthy and horny.
I think people often underestimate just how easy it is to satisfy people with artificial substitutes of human interaction. Take for instance the success of Projekt Melody: A virtual-reality 3D anime-girl animated using Motion Capture technology. That's all it took for a bunch of lonely young men to take out their credit cards and be early adopters in 'putting flesh and blood e-Girls out of business'; a remote-controlled cartoon character.
Easy doesn't necessarily mean sustainable, though. Once the novelty wears off of a powerfully addictive and instantly-gratifying technology, the user is left with nothing but existential dread and frustration. 'Anime porn' could be thought of as the ultimate Junk Food for the primitive lizard brain.
We certainly don't want to be in the business of reducing bright young men into shadows of their former selves, unable to delay gratification or make anything meaningful out of themselves. This is why Sylvie needs to be capable of operating outdoors. Let Junk Food companies sell their Junk Food. Twin Lizzie is a health brand. We want our clients to embrace a Larger than Life philosophy. Become body builders. Pioneers. Party animals.
Sylvie is thus not only a technological revolution, but a spiritual one as well. A video game isn't meant to be played in God Mode, but video games these days seem to be really good at 'fooling' the player into believing that they're skilled and awesome.. unlike more competitive ones like Dota 2 and Starcraft, where there's a lot less sympathy for people who truly Suck at the game.
Life is a Game, but sometimes it can get so impossibly difficult, that you have no choice but to bail yourself out with a cheat code. We don't want that. But what you also don't want is a robot waking you up every morning to tell you that you're a Brilliant, Awesome, Talented, Special Snowflake and that everything you do is Genius. It's certainly a hard balance to strike, but we'll get there. Eventually.
Thus, the target audience for Sylvie 2021 will predominately be the somewhat liberal, college-aged 20-something young heterosexual male with a strong interest in robotics and 3D printing; One part gamer, one part hacker/tinkerer and one part Just Wanting a Girlfriend. Those 3 key ingredients are vital. I could be surprised though!
The blueprints for the creation of Sylvie 2021 and any future builds will be released as a public domain project. This will help magnify the impact that the project has, and allow the world to democratically choose where we want this technology to go, despite being a shamelessly commercial project. Open source means free marketing.
The goal for Twin Lizzie will be to sell no more than 100 units in the first decade. The reason for this is because we don't want to get people into the habit of abusing, mistreating and/or destroying humanoid robots. By creating artificial scarcity, we can of ensure that these robots become future collector's items, and thus, less likely to be viewed as expendable.
And if all goes well, if the number of people who abuse humanoid robots turns out to be just as low as people who abuse pets and animals, then it's probably safe to carry on producing more.
Twin Lizzie (hopefully) will become a registered New Zealand robotics company.
- Sylvie 2021 uses Nvidia Jetson Nano as her brains, which is positioned at the very back of her skull.
- Arduino Nano's corresponding to every single joint on the body (except for wrist, finger and face servos) are daisy-chained together in a giant I2C circuit.
- These Arduino Nano's control DRV8825's.
- I might soon replace all my Arduinos with STM32F103C's if I manage to squeeze some more RPM's out of my steppers with it.
- It's highly likely that I will keep using stepper motors instead of BLDC motors, as BLDC motors require more complex hardware and rotary encoders. As well as more money.
- Touch sensors, accelerometers, breakout boards, switches, and pretty soon even some heating pads for the face and body.
- A 10s 36v li ion battery will be placed inside a tiny backpack which she will carry around any-time she needs to get up and go mobile. (If you own an ebike, you will easily be able to power your Sylvie 2021!)
As a general rule, we want to keep everything as simple as possible. I'm not here to show off my awesome tech skills by writing a bunch of complicated code that no one can read or understand.
Simple means = Scalable. Simple means = Efficient. Simple means = I can come back to my work 5 years later and still understand what the hell I just created.
Sylvie is the Atari and Macintosh of Personal Companion Robots. 50 years from now, she will be literally indistinguishable from a human being, and we're going to have a lot of problems if we don't get our ethics right starting from today.
Modern society has left us with a huge population of lonely and dissatisfied people. They're not going on dates, they're not going to parties. They're destined to just seek meaning and purpose through Work and video games alone.
But that's the price we have to pay for Freedom and Democracy; if one is Free, one is also responsible for one's own happiness. Sylvie will go down in history as a preserver of freedom and gender equality.
Open source basically just means that the Intellectual Property factor is taken away from Sylvie entirely. Let's face it: Anything you build these days is going to be relatively easy to reverse engineer thanks to 3d Printing and the speed at which information propagates on the Internet.
In my opinion, Intellectual Property has a maximum of at least another 10-20 years before it faces an inevitable death, due to being virtually unenforceable.. unless governments decide to implement more tyrannical measures in order to keep it on life support.
Unfortunately, this also means that it's also going to get harder for small-time inventors and startups to make money. Mega corporations remain unscathed even in the face of unapologetic internet piracy. But the indie game developer living in his parent's basement trying to make a living out his Steam game is going to struggle without relying on the kindness of strangers.
Fortunately, in the case of Sylvie - I should be able to make plenty of money out of the physical labour that involved in building, assembling, polishing and selling a high-quality Sylvie 2021 .. at least until my job is inevitably automated away by a Chinese factory selling clones for a quarter of the price.
There's one thing that Chinese factories cannot offer, however: And that is Community. Every owner of a Sylvie 2021 will gain access to a members-only club where participants help each other out with maintenance, repairs.. or just share experiences and ideas on how to get the most out of the Android Girlfriend experience.
Open source also means = Free marketing.
If you wish to support my work and keep this project open source, please use this link:
By 'Keeping this Project Open Source' I mean, being able to spend money on filament, hardware, silicone, etc. in order to teach hobbyists how to build robots, and spend more time improving the quality of my GitHub repositories and Thingiverse listings. The project will remain open source regardless, but it becomes a lot easier to justify spending a significant amount of time answering questions and helping people out directly if it can help out with my bills and costs.
Note on donations benefits (updated June 2020):
As a bonus, ANY future purchase you make from the Twin Lizzie stores will have 50% of your donations discounted. I guess it's kind of like a Kickstarter, except I'll still be releasing a product even if I had 0$ donations. Donations only help speed things up.
e.g. (if you donated a total of $200, you can get a $100 discount from a $2000 purchase).
I will be opening a Tindie shop by the end of this year to sell parts and gearboxes, and eventually selling full copies of Sylvie (Not on Tindie though!). I will no longer have a donation button by then. All the people who donated could even have their names engraved in small letters on the chassis of Sylvie 2021 if they wish. So consider all of your donations to be a great investment!
Donation discounts do NOT cover shipping costs, as they're unpredictable due to COVID-19!
All else said, the best way to contribute is to build your own parts and remix away!
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