Collaborate Disseminate
While the Hackaday reader likely knows all about Nikola Tesla and his incredible body of work, the same can’t necessarily be said for the average passerby. Even a child can be counted on to know the names of Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell, but as [Daniel Springwald] laments, the …read more
Continue reading Animatronic Nikola Tesla Sets the Record Straight
Join us on Wednesday, May 20 at noon Pacific for the Animatronics Hack Chat with Will Cogley!
While robots have only a made a comparatively recent appearance on the technology timeline, people have been building mechanical simulations of living organisms for a long time indeed. For proof, one needs only …read more
Of the 43 muscles that comprise the human face, only a few are actually important to speaking. And yet replicating the movements of the mouth by mechanical means always seems to end up only partly convincing. Servos and linkages can only approximate the complex motions the lips, cheeks, jaw, and …read more
Continue reading This Animatronic Mouth Mimics Speech With Servos
Even in a world that is as currently far off the rails as this one is, we’re going to go out on a limb and say that this machine learning, servo-powered prayer bot is going to be the strangest thing you see today. We’re happy to be wrong about that, …read more
Continue reading Silicone and AI Power This Prayerful Robotic Intercessor
At this point, society has had over three decades to get used to the Blue Man Group. Maybe that’s why we’re less disturbed by [Graham Jessup]’s face-tracking Watchman than we should be. Either that, or it’s because it reminds us of Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Frankly, …read more
Continue reading Watchman Watches You Watching Him Watch You
Fair warning for the squeamish: some versions of [Will Cogley]’s animatronic heart are realistic enough that you might not want to watch the video below. That’d be a shame though, because he really put a lot of effort into the build, and the results have a lot to teach about …read more
[Will] wanted to build some animatronic eyes that didn’t require high-precision 3D printing. He wound up with a forgiving design that uses an Arduino and six servo motors. You can see the video of the eyes moving around in the video below.
The bill of materials is pretty simple and …read more
Robots of the entertainment industry are given life by character animation, where the goal is to emotionally connect with the audience to tell a story. In comparison, real-world robot movement design focus more on managing physical limitations like sensor accuracy and power management. Tools for robot control are thus more …read more
Continue reading Use Movie Tools To Make Your Robot Move Like Movie Robots
Despite the incredible advancements in special effects technology since the film’s release, the dinosaurs in 1993’s Jurassic Park still look just as terrifying today as they did nearly 30 years ago. This has largely been attributed to the fact that the filmmakers wisely decided to use physical models in many …read more
Continue reading Lifelike Dinosaur Emerges From The Plumbing Aisle
Hackers seem intent on making sure the world doesn’t forget that, for a brief shining moment, everyone thought Big Mouth Billy Bass was a pretty neat idea. Every so often we see a project that takes this classic piece of home decor and manages to shoehorn in some new features or capabilities, and with the rise of voice controlled home automation products from the likes of Amazon and Google, they’ve found a new ingredient du jour when preparing stuffed bass.
[Ben Eagan] has recently completed his entry into the Pantheon of animatronic fish projects, and while we’ll stop short of …read more