I'm new to puppet making, and I haven't found a good resource on this yet. I'd like to make an animatronic head piece for a walkaround puppet costume, one which opens and closes its jaws with motors, and a few other things like lip movement would be controlled by a waldo hand controller. I've seen videos of these things but I don't know where to find resources on building one. Do you guys know of any material on the subject?

Thanks!

By the way it may not have been clear, but I'm talking about just the controller. I won't have a problem making the puppet itself. The last one I made used a hobby airplace radio controller and receiver, but I want my control to be more natural.

Here are some sites that cater to robotics.
http://www.character-shop.com/waldo.html
http://www.robotshop.com/

Thank you for the reply. I have seen that page on waldoes before, the descriptions of the mechanisms are thought provoking but not quite what I'm looking for. I am also familiar with the hobby robotics websites and have been doing robotic applications for a long time, what I believe I am looking for is some documentation from someone who has built their own waldo controller, so that I could get a starting point on what sorts of potentiometers to use and how they are mounted in the hand frame, etc.

On a similar note, I am also planning to work with cable controlled puppets, and I feel like there may be a better cable resource than buying bicycle cables. Would you happen to know anything about that?

Thank you,
Chuck

No I am afraid I am not going to be much help to you really.  In fact we really don't have anyone here that works with robotics extensively. Wish we did since the topic seems to come up quite often. My best guess in regards to alternatives to buying bicycle cables would be to find a hobby store in your area that caters to radio control hobbyist. Both the radio controlled airplanes and cars use push pull cables. There are on-line sources for these like http://www.rcplanet.com but if you find a local source then you have the advantage of meeting folks face to face that understand the mechanics and who might be able to give you guidance.

Where are you located? Axtell has gotten into animatronic puppets quite a bit. http://www.axtell.com/  They are located in Ventura CA and perhaps if you are close to there you could contact them and arrange a visit.  While I've never met Steve Axtell myself he seems pretty accessible.

Hope you'll hang out and join in some of the other discussions. We could use someone who has worked with animatronics and robotics before.

And now some more links... Just in case you have not seen these sites and as refrence for use and future members.

http://www.micromagicsystems.com - Company that sells robotics
http://www.lynxmotion.com/ - Another seller
http://www.lynxmotion.net/index.php - This is the forum for the above site... may be a good place to ask questions.

http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~pappasg/papers/KFP-ICRA07.pdf - This is a scientific paper on Sensor-Based Temporal Logic Motion Planning. I have no idea what it all means but thought I would add it here.

Lastly as inspiration for today check this out. You can read more about this at: http://siliconangle.com/blog/2012/01/04/kinect-and-wii-used-to-waldo-a-nao-robot-to-brush-a-cat-imagine-what%E2%80%99s-next/
 

 

Cool, thanks for all the good info here. I'm located in Baltimore, MD, so I unfortunately couldn't hop over to CA.

Perhaps I would have a bit of help to give others interested in animatronic puppetry, although I have only just gotten started in it. I'll look around and see if anyone has been asking about it recently.

Here's an example of what I've figured out how to do on my own, this video doesn't show all the detail of the eyeball movement (the brightness is too high to see the pupils, but they are on full eyeball motion control): Baltimore Rock Opera Society- Valhella - Jack Sossman - THE WOLF- Killen it.

In that case the jaw is controlled by the actor inside the mask. That was fine for that show, but I'm planning something in a few years where I want animatronics with no people inside. I did figure out a clever way to translate the actor's mouth movements to the robotic jaw, though, and I'd like to share that information with anyone interested.

Oh, found another video where you can see the eyeball movement: Fenrir's First Natty Boh
One eyelid had a problem that day, and that was before adding the wolf features.

Very nice! So how did you translate the mouth movement of the actor to the jaw? Looks like there is a strap under his chin that perhaps is part of that.

There are two linear potentiometers on the left and right sides of the helmet. I took them out of an old DJ mixer because they are low resistance and move smoothly. I attached them with brackets and put a spring between the slider and the top structure to hold it up at the top. The chin strap is attached to each of the sliders as well. When the actor moves his or her jaw, the sliders provide resistances of 0 - 1000 ohms, which are wired in series and go into an input of an Arduino controller on the back. There are two quick servos (a lot of trial and error finding the right ones) which push down and pull up on the jaw piece, controlled by the Arduino. The jaw itself is actually mounted on two springloaded bearings which I found in the waste parts of a datacenter. They're wound so that the weight of the jaw is negligible and the servos don't have a lot of load. I can't find any more of those yet, unfortunately, but they're really great bearings.

The eyes are controlled by a radio helicopter controller and receiver, three servos, and the mechanism that drives the eyes was laser cut and 3D printed by a friend of mine.

And here you where looking for help from us.  

I have to improve somehow, I'm not sure where to look yet for people who have done this stuff many times over. Maybe there are a few on here somewhere.

Besides the waldo design, what I really want to get into is the cable puppetry, like this here:

Animatronic Tentacle Test

The guy has so many people asking him how he made that, that he doesn't recognize someone who can and will actually build and improve on his design, so I can't seem to get through to him.