[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 features an Arduino, a driver board, and a joystick. The 3D printing parts are easy to print with no supports, and will work with PLA. Other than opening up holes there wasn’t much post-processing required, though he did sand the actual eyeballs which sounds painful.
The result is a nice tight package to hold six motors, and the response time of the eye motion is very impressive. This would be great as part of a prop or even a robot in place of the conventional googly eyes.
While the joystick is nice, we’d like to see an ultrasonic sensor connected so the eyes track you as you walk across the room. Maybe they could be mounted behind an old portrait for next Halloween. Then again, perhaps a skull would be even better. If you want a refresher about servos, start with a laser turret tutorial.
Reminds me a little bit of Disney’s Animatronics.
The blinking while the eyes move is ridiculously bad and is used way too much in this video to hide the unnaturally abrupt motion of the eyes. It needs some finesse.
Just what I need, I hate it when my robots doesnt look at me when I talk to them…
But I will redesign it to use only 2 servos for the eylids, one would be enough, but then they can’t blink individually
I” can’t take my eyes off of you”
-Frankie Valli and the The 4 Seasons
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGFToiLtXro
Now where have I seen this before?