Have I gone off the deep end? Where are the radio and robot projects?

This does deserve some explanation. Like a lot of kids, I was amazed at the animatronic characters and creatures on my first trip to Disneyland. I’m going to date myself here… This trip happened to be during the summer of 1977. Most of you know what else happened during the summer of 1977, right? Yeah. Star Wars. Guess what quickly overtook my fascination with animatronics? Droids, or to put in today’s terminology, autonomous mobile robots. I was less interested in pre-programmed automatons than I was with a mechanical pal that could wander around, do smart things, and maybe even fix a moisture vaporator.

Fast forward to today. In my professional life I’ve worked on some cool robots with great people. Most were practical creations solving specific problems. Except for the first baby doll prototypes at IS Robotics (now iRobot), the rest of the robots I’ve worked on lacked personality and any artistic features. These just weren’t necessary to solve the problems at hand. But today, we have AI models that can chat with you as if they were a pirate, a Klingon, William Shatner, or Yoda. We can also reach into the world of animatronics and create amazingly lifelike characters and creatures. What would be more fun, a dinosaur that roams your house sucking up dirt, or a Roomba? How about a pool skimming robot that’s a pirate ship complete with a crew that talks with you? Totally unnecessary, but so much more entertaining!

Great, why am I making puppets, dinosaurs, and ducks? I want to try my hand at making animatronic creatures. I have the electronics, programming, and some of the mechanical aspects covered. If you strip the technology out of an animatronic, you’re left with at most a complicated puppet, or at least a static model, but with amazing artistic features.

To be honest, I lack artistic talent. Maybe I have some talent for visualizing in three dimensions, but other than that, I’m no natural artist. To complicate matters, I’m also very red/green colorblind, which made art my least favorite school subject growing up (ok, maybe tied with gym, I didn’t suck as much at gym though). Since I’ve always shied away from anything artistic, I lack the artistic skills and knowledge that are really necessary to bring creations to life. The only way to overcome this deficit is through deliberate practice. I need to create and learn, over and over. So I made a puppet. And a dinosaur. And had the opportunity to work on ducks. And am currently making another dinosaur. Each project is expanding my toolbox, improving my skills, and opening my eyes through experience (not just watching someone else on YouTube).

Please bear with me as I go on this adventure. I promise to post some ham radio projects now and then. I will be delving back into the tech side of animatronics as well.

Here are some work in progress videos.

Click on the image below to see the Facebook post.