Category Archives: animatronics

Animatronic Puppet Takes Cues From Animation Software

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Lip syncing for computer animated characters has long been simplified. You draw a set of lip shapes for vowels and other sounds your character makes and let the computer interpolate how to go from one shape to the next. But with physical, real world puppets, all those movements have to be done manually, frame-by-frame. Or do they?

Stop motion animator and maker/hacker [James Wilkinson] is working on a project involving a real-world furry cat character called Billy Whiskers and decided that Billy’s lips would be moved one frame at a time using servo motors under computer control while [James] moves …read more

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R.O.B. Gets a Proper RC Resurrection

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More than 30 years ago, Nintendo’s R.O.B graced toy shelves, helping usher in an age of video games that is here to stay. For the few of us lucky to own one of these relics, we’ll find that R.O.B’s internal mechanisms that drive the arms and neck movements are just begging to be modified. That’s exactly what [Kenny Storm] did, installing a few continuous-rotation servos to give R.O.B a new mobile life of its own.

The original R.O.B featured a surprisingly intricate gearbox configuration embedded inside the shoulders for both up-and-down shoulder movement and hand-pinching. (For a more detailed investigation …read more

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Real, Life-Sized Transformers

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Ever dreamed of a real, life-sized Transformer in your garage? The Turkish startup Letrons now offers you exactly that: Their animatronic Autobot drives like a car, transforms like a Transformer, and supposedly fights off space threats with its built-in smoke machine and sound effects.

Letrons’s Transformer seems to be built upon a BMW E92 coupé chassis. According to the company, the beast is packed with powerful hydraulics and servo motors, allowing it to transform and move fast. Sensors all around the chassis give it some interactivity and prevent it from crushing innocent bystanders when in remote-control mode. Interestingly, its …read more

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Art and Creepy Mechanisms

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Latvian artist [Krists Pudzens] just put on a show in Sweden and sent us the video of his amazing kinetic sculpture. (Embedded below.) We found an arty-theory writeup of another exhibition of his to share, but we had so many technical questions that we had to write him back asking for details. And boy, did he answer.

In the video, a couple of animatronic faces watch you as crab-like rope-climber bots inch upwards and red wings flap in the background. There’s a lot of brilliant mechanisms here, and aside from whatever it all means, we just like to watch …read more

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