Animatronics and Cosplay

Instructables author Honus has posted this excellent tutorial on how he built an Animatronic Horus Guard Mask from Stargate.  The detail on his build is amazing - a fantastic blend of art and technology.  The heart of the build is an Arduino-based motion control rig, controlling 5 servos that move the bird head and the fans on the side.  The video below shows the mask in action.

Also check out Honus' other build: Predator

If you're interested in something a little... creepier, check out these animatronic babies:

A Maker Wedding

This post is a little late in coming, but this past March I married a wonderful and patient woman, Beth.  For our wedding we wanted to keep costs low and still make it very personalized, so we did all of the planning and made several custom pieces for our special day.  We planned color schemes, table settings, and the hall layout using InkScape - an open source SVG editor, and Beth made beautiful blue and black ribbon table squares for the centerpieces. I designed 3D printed candle holders, and custom ties for my groomsmen presents.

More details and fancy bits after the break.

Automatic Cat Feeder

It's 4am, and I'm sound asleep dreaming of robots when I'm startled awake by 10 lbs of hungry cat jumping on my face with a pleading "mew".  I get up, feed the cats, and unsuccessfully attempt to resume my slumber.  This scene repeated itself every day for only a couple weeks before I decided I needed an automatic cat feeder to maintain my sanity.

The feeder needed to only handle dry food, be able to ration food quantity so that the cats wouldn't get fat, and it needed to have a lot of storage so that the cats wouldn't starve while my wife and I were traveling.  Similar off-the-shelf feeders cost upwards of $50, and I like a challenge, so I set out to build one myself.

Build details and more pictures after the break.

Engineering Challenge - Integrate Functionality & Livability

Okay so maybe a few of my posts are going to be influenced by the TEDx talk I went to last night, mostly because my head started exploding with all these ideas because of the talks. So I issue a challenge to all my smarty fellow Robotics students [you can do this too Mueth], and any blog readers out there are more then welcome to join in as well. I want you to take 2 or more things and merge them in such a way to improve both their designs and functionality. To increase there aesthetic pleasure as well massively improve there use. Now at this point you're like WTF Kayla really? Yes, really. Its not hard I promise, I came up with like 3 really awesome ideas while just waiting for my ride to pick me up after the TEDx event. ^^ It was kind of funny seeing me trying to write down and draw them out as quickly as possible before I forgot them. And by the way this challenge is inspired by a Mr. Derren Petrucci who gave an amazing talk and who I think would be a good person for UAT's crazy Robotics division to work with~ *hinthintMuethhinthint*