For my Senior Design project at the University of Central Florida, I worked on a team of six to create a small scale animatronic dinosaur based off an ankylosaurus.
The final product has motion in the legs, tail, neck, jaw, and eyelids. It is entirely self contained and battery powered.
All custom components were fabricated using 3D Printing. To achieve motion, 11 stepper motors and 3 servo motors are used. A custom Printed Circuit Board is used as the electronics backplane. All of the motion mechanisms are tightly woven into the internal structural design, utilizing every inch of space.
This project represents roughly 8 months of work imagining, designing, fabricating, programming, and iterating on the figure to create the final product.
My role was mainly on CAD work, electronics planning, and animation programming. I also took on project management tasks to ensure our group kept to our schedule.
Head and eye motion close up
Head and eye motion
Tail Motion
Leg motion
Body with skin removed
Electronics backplane
Tail motion mechanism
head motion mechanism
Leg motion mechanism
Tail motion with skin removed
Head motion with skin removed
Leg motion with skin removed
CAD Model of dinosaur