ALDOUS (EMS-30-02) Robo-Animatronic (C.Strathearn MRes Animatronics UoH 'ADA' 2016)

Aldous is an animatronic system developed in compliment to my M.A (res) theoretical work (The Renaissance of Animatronic Characters in Modern Cinema). The project explores interactive animatronic emulation as a form of uncanny visceral filmic engagement, contesting the dominance of contemporary CGI processing. The character exhibits a fully articulated upper torso with configurable appendages. The systems utilises and explores an amalgamation of scripture including: Ardunio; Processing; Apple Script and Voice Recognition software (siri derivative). The system further explores the development of a control system that permits seamless transfiguration between autonomous and man operated input for use in live action sequence.

Full guide (http://carlstrathearnmares.blogspot.com/)

Comments

[Invento Guy]

This is Awesome..!

can you please make an instructable of simple animatronic head which follows human hand as the aldous robot?

please sir, it will be great for beginners.

[CStrathearn]

Sorry for taking so long to get back to you, my other project Egor V.2 is a simplified version of Aldous and it has the source code you need. There is a book called (Arduino Robotics, 2011, Warren et al) and it has the original code that I adapted, it may be useful to you also.

[Meglymoo87]

i didn't see the full guide link on here earlier, so thanks for that (if added)

[Meglymoo87]

lol, at the end of the first video, someone is manually moving the "robot's" arm and mouth like a puppet.

[CStrathearn]

.. Well it is a puppet, and a robot and an animatronic. It was not built to be a standalone robot, it is an artificial character (like my previous project also posted on here) developed for film engagement. I had my friend operate the arm and fingers via a control panel on the back of the robot (explained in the second video). The mouth operates on it own via an audio trigger (explained in the second video). The objective of this project was in many ways focused on the internal lure of an artificial character and how embodiment is diffused in CGI. Therefore, incorporating 3 levels of control (second video) was an attempt to reify the image into something more organic.

[Meglymoo87]

thanks for explaining! Excellent job:)

[Meglymoo87]

author, did you make this?

[CStrathearn]

Yes :)