Jun 8, 2015 | By Simon

After having a huge start as one of the most widely-used and successful methods of special effects for filmmakers, the use of analog animatronic technologies has slowly taken a steep decline in recent years due to the lower costs of CGI.  Among the last movies that used animatronics to create special effects before the entire film industry switched over to digital effects includes Jurassic Park.  

The technology, which uses a combination of puppet and robotic devices to emulate human or animal behaviors, can bring life-like characteristics to nearly any inanimate object whether the goal is to make it look like something that exists on planet Earth or something that has been made up entirely.  Among other uses of the technology include movable eyeballs, talking mouths, movable limbs and the ability to physically move.  While the underlying ‘bones’ of the technology are nothing more than assemblies made of pneumatics, hydraulics and various pieces of circuitry, the skins make the puppets more believable and can be made of everything from flexible skin materials to hard plastics and are finished with details including hair, feathers and paint.   

 

However, despite how much fun the technology is, it is far from easy to create a robotic puppet that is able to consistently repeat a programmed command without years dedicated to honing the craft.  For those who want to try their hand at animatronics for a cosplay or other simple costume project, the recently-published  ‘Really Simple Animatronic Tail project from Adafruit just might be the perfect place to start. 

“Animatronics is tricky,” says project creator Phillip Burgess.

“In addition to the software and electrical engineering of most of our projects, it requires mechanical engineering … this project reduces animatronics to its simplest case. Mechanical tails are complex stuff, often involving armatures for bones and cable mechanisms to simulate muscles and tendons. Rather that fighting against gravity, we’ll instead make it our ally. Thinking of the tail as a pendulum, a single small servo and a little math is all it takes.”

Parts and tools needed:

  • A 5V Trinket microcontroller 
  • A Micro Servo
  • A Power Source
  • A Tail
  • 3D Printer (or use a third-party service)
  • #4-40 and #2-56 machine screws and nuts for assembling the enclosure.
  • Cable “zip tie” for joining tail to servo clip.

Starting with a microcontroller, a micro servo, a power source and of course, a tail, Burgess jumps straight into the project with an overview of creating what is arguably the most important part of the project: the wiring.  For those that aren’t very confident in their wiring skills, Burgess has done an exceptional job of breaking down the process in easy-to-understand steps that any beginner can pick up on.  Once the ‘nervous system’ of the assembly has been created, next up is to create a 3D printed housing to store all of the necessary components within the tail.   

Thankfully, Burgess has supplied us with all of the necessary 3D print files to get up an and running with the housing (which could be printed before starting the project if you have time).  For those that don’t have access to a 3D printer at home, school or work, the files can also be uploaded to a 3d printing service such as 3D Hubs or Shapeways.  Once the housing parts have been printed, all of the parts can be assembled into the housing for safe keeping and organization.  In total, the enclosure contains four pieces that are fastened together with machine screws. The parts were designed to be optimized to print on FDM based machines with no support material.

Once the housing has been assembled, next up is to install the code, which Burgess has also supplied.  All that is needed for this step is a simple copy and paste using the Arduino IDE software.  The code is based on a formula devised by Galileo Galilei in the early 1600s that was based on the period of a pendulum’s swing time.  

Once the code has been installed, the tail should be ready for use!  Due to the way that the code has been set up, the tail will cycle between four states when in use: resting (no wagging), ramp up, steady wag, and ramp down.

Whether you plan on using the project to create a component for an actual costume or just for fun, this is surely among one of the best projects we’ve seen that teaches the foundations of animatronics design.  For the full build instructions, head over to Adafruit.  


 

Posted in 3D Printing Applications

 

 

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