Custom Animatronics and “Emotional” Robots! Developed by Walt Disney in the early ’60s, animatronics has come a long way. The subject of animatronics, emotional recognition, and display has been speculated by many animatronic manufacturers and evolved into a significant industry trend. Animatronics is rapidly changing due to the technological advancements taking place in the hardware and software section of the industry. Today, let’s take a closer look at it.
•
Anthropomorphic Robot: Kismet
Animatronics is a subset of anthropomorphic robots that curiously draw inspiration from nature. One of the latest advancements in developing an anthropomorphic robot is Kismet. It engages the audience with an expressive face to face interaction. Inspired by various social development, ethology, psychology, and evolutionary perspective, this project incorporates various concepts and theories.
This diverse range of scientific viewpoints enables Kismet to enter into an intuitive and natural social interaction with a human being, quite similar to an adult-infant exchange. Kismet perceives numerous natural social cues from auditory and visual channels and in turn, delivers social signals to people through body posture, vocalization, gaze direction, and facial expressions. ➢ Interactive Robot Roboticists and animatronic manufacturers are conducting a great deal of research around the world on developing interactive robots with a human face. The development of such interactive human-like robots brings research to the frontiers of human psychology, robotics, and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Machines that display emotions have a long history back. The entertainment field is also overlapping recent researches on androids – the term android itself denotes a robot designed to act and look like a human. The advancement in this engineering encourages the roboticists to explore the efficacy of the project’s capability to exhibit human emotions. It also demands them to develop the physical mechanisms that can execute the human facial movements in a realistic manner. This effort leads to the designing and development of animatronic robot SSU-1 (stands for Savannah State Univerity-1). SSU-1 can be controlled by a pre-programmed microcontroller and demonstrates human-like motions for entertainment purposes.
Now, let’s take a quick look at its physical structure and motion dynamics. ➢ SSU-1 – Brief Overview SSU-1 is a type of animatronic puppet which is animated by using electromechanical devices. The essential part of SSU-1 is its frame. The frame supports any mechanical mechanism for mouth, eyebrows, eyes, or other facial gestures. Actuators like stepper motors, solenoids, servomotors, and others are supported by these frames. These actuators ensure the actual movement of the mouth, eye, and other face mechanisms.
You may think of the frame as a skull but it need not be limited to a human skull shape or even look like a skull at all. Custom animatronics manufactures are experimenting with various models to give a unique shape to the robot.
Here electronics and software ensure synchronization of puppet/sound motion. The control structure of various facial mechanisms including eye movement is not visible to the audience. But internally, springs are used along with DC motors for controlling the eyes position to the right, left, up, and down directions. Class 2 levers are used for increasing the speed of any facial movement.
Frames can be implemented in any of the following ways: ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪
2D sliders on the flat mask Side view 3D mold Simple cross design 3D adapt a model or toy 3D bulk heads and stringers
Also, there are two main sections of facial mechanisms for the custom animatronics figure: 1. Machines to enhance the mechanical benefits of the actuator 2. Controlling the facial gesture mechanism
Conclusion Though the figure of SSU-1 is still limited to the entertainment domain, we can speculate that its horizon will expand in the near future. For more information about custom animatronics or to design one, contact our professionals at Custom Entertainment Solutions. Our certified experts can assist you in making your own “emotional” robot! Call 01.801.410.4869 today. What are your thoughts? Comment below and share with us.
Custom Entertainment Solutions INC 536 Pickett Cir, Salt Lake City, Utah 84115 Phone: +1 801-410-4869 Website: www.animatronicrobotics.com Email ID: support@customentsolutions.com