In 2021, Ben Howard had the idea use an old self driving food delivery robot into an animatronic piano playing puppet and drive it around the city, a la Vanessa Carlton’s famous music video.
Mechanically, the puppet consists of three assemblies – the puppet body and two hand movers which manipulate the hands via rods (like a typical muppet).
The puppet body contains servo motors controlling 6 axes of motion – body forward / back lean, shoulder rotation, head rotation, head tilt, and upper / lower jaws. The jaws are moved in tandem to create head pitch, or opposite to open and close the mouth.
Each hand mover is an azimuth / elevation mounted servo pair connected to a carbon fiber rod affixed to the puppet hand. Horizontally, the puppet hand moves in a slight arc rather than linearly down the keyboard.
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
