Pixar-style lamp project is a huge animatronics win

pixar-lamp-animated-procedurally

Even with the added hardware that lamp still looks relatively normal. But its behavior is more than remarkable. The lamp interacts with people in an incredibly lifelike way. This is of course inspired by the lamp from Pixar's Luxo Jr. short film. But there's a little bit of most useless machine added just for fun. If you try to shut it off the lamp shade is used to flip that switch on the base … [Read more...]

Making your anime papercraft move to the music

anime-dances-to-the-music

This anime character is dancing to the music thanks to some animatronic tricks which [Scott Harden] put together. She dances perfectly, exhibiting different arm and head movements at just the right time. The secret to the synchronization is actually in the right channel of the audio being played. The character in question is from an Internet meme called the Leekspin song. [Scott] reproduced it … [Read more...]

InMoov: a 3d printed animatronic hand you can download

3D-Printed-Animatronic-Hand_1-150x150

[Hairygael] has been hard at work designing and building this robot structure that can be completely 3d printed. He's admittedly not a big electronics person, so most of his focus has been on the design and construction of the bot frame. So far, he as a fully 3d printable (and available for download) hand that you can see in action after the break. Once printed, you'll have to drill it for your … [Read more...]

This animatronic Horus Guard mask is so good, even Anubis would be fooled

horus-guard-mask

[Jerome Kelty] is a big fan of the movie Stargate, and when he saw it for the first time, he wanted one of the awesome helmets worn by the Horus Guards. This isn’t the kind of thing you would normally find at your local costume shop, so he knew that he would have to build one of his own. After rejecting multiple designs over the years, he finally came up with a solution that he thought would … [Read more...]

Basic Animatronics Continued: Servo Actuated Mouth

Still chuckling over this expression.

[Chris] is at it again and this time he has put together a tutorial rounding off his animatronic face by actuating the mouth. His tutorial covers two different styles of robot mouth: an LCD mouth which dims to imply actuation and a servo articulated flap. [Chris] covers all the aspects of each mouth type, from the basics of human mouth actuation to servo motor control. In this case the LCD … [Read more...]

Basic Animatronics Tutorial: PIC Based Servo Eyebrows

servoface

[Chris] writes in to let us know about his latest animatronics tutorial, this time on robotic eyebrows! The tutorial takes us through the process of using a fairly simple PIC  circuit to display various facial expressions. Since a wide array of facial expressions have unique and well understood eyebrow positions this simple hack can make even the most bland looking mask come to life . … [Read more...]

DIY Animatronic penguin shakes and grooves

animatronic_penguin

Instructables user [djsfantasi] wanted to build an animated holiday display using puppets as a means of raising money for a local arts program. After doing a bit of reading and research however, he decided that building animatronic characters for the display was not that far fetched an idea. His first inclination was to build a penguin, allowing him to focus mostly on torso motion rather than … [Read more...]