Animatronic Eyes Test

These are a pair of separately-driven eyes I've created for a robotic "parade float" I'm building. The float is designed as a steam locomotive and each of these eyes will be mounted to either side of the smoke stack. I've taped some blue painter's tape to eye globes to give an idea of what the eyes will look like after they've been painted. The big issue at this point is the amount of slop in the eyes' motions, due to the loose couplings I've created. Will need to find a way to tighten that up! See more at www.tinyparades.com

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• animatronic
• eyes
• tinyparades
• servos
• phidgets
• robotics

[bradsommers1961]

It looks like this is arrangement is not able to look in all directions (namely, up and to the right if you are looking out from the device's position). Is this correct? I'm trying to visualize the movement of the linkages, and it seems like it would not be able to do this. I have a gimballed arrangement that is able to look in all directions, but using three servos. If there is a way of doing it with two, that would be great. Thanks.

[tinyparades]

@bradsommers1961 It provides a pretty full range of motion, actually (I realize in looking at the video that it does not show an up-to-the-right motion, though, so I can see why you might get that impression). The left-and-right linkage is on the same plane as the horizontal axis, so it is pretty unaffected by the vertical motion and has full range. The up-and-down linkage isn't quite as well placed, but still provides plenty of range.

[kiyotewolf]

Simple yet elegant.

[simierski]

This is an extremely interesting design. I am thinking of going down this route myself, however the eyes I need to move in this sort of fashion have to be 4mm diameter, which is incredibly small. Is this sort of mechanism possible to downsize to power eyes around that size?