What senses and actuators does Lucy have?
There are two Lucys, or rather the one Lucy has had two bodies. Lucy MkI was built on a shoestring budget and very quickly, in order to get a feel for the problems. This body is now pretty much worn out and unuseable. In 2003 NESTA provided some funding for Lucy MkII, which is still in development (and driving me mad). This will be a lot more sophisticated and significantly more like a biological organism. Regarding Lucy MkI: She has moving arms (each with four degrees of freedom) and head (two degrees in the neck, plus moving eyes, eyelids and jaw). She has no legs, because this first version uses standard servomotors for her muscles and these aren’t strong enough to support her weight. Lucy 2 won’t have legs either but will at least be mobile. Lucy’s motors are configured as “virtual muscles.” This means that they can behave almost like real pairs of antagonistic muscles – becoming limp, responding to changes in applied force, and detecting external forces such as touch and collision
