# Animatronic Tail



## liang (Sep 21, 2012)

Thought I'd start a thread for any interested parties.  Regardless of the success of the project, I probably won't sell them, but it may provide some motivation for anyone who wants to do similar.  Anyways, here's the current progress:





The tail is laser cut from 3mm acrylic and built out of segments like the following:




The segments are assembled in chains using collar pins with alternating axis of rotation (provides two axis of movement). and use springs to provide the opposing tension and cables to transfer the motion:




The cables are driven using stepper motors:




Size comparison:





Any questions anyone might have I'd be happy to answer them the best I can.

Cheers,
Liang


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## Aldino (Sep 21, 2012)

That looks really neat, what programming do you use for it or it manually controlled somehow?


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## liang (Sep 21, 2012)

Thanks, the microcontroller is an AtMega324 (programmed in AVR C) driving some stepper motor controllers I sourced from SparkFun.  I'm uncertain yet on control methods, but was thinking of using two 3axis/gyro/acceleramators (with what's called a Kalman filter to merge the signals).  This will give me a accurate orientation sensor (similar to a Wii Mote) with two of them I can calculate the bend of the spine and use the tail as just an extension of that (follows the spines movements).  Would like to play with EEG, but I think it is outside of what I would want to spend in both time and money.


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## Caedman (Sep 21, 2012)

I'd like to see a video of it in action.


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## Dokid (Sep 21, 2012)

Caedman said:


> I'd like to see a video of it in action.



Yeah that would be amazing!


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## YaoiMeowmaster (Sep 21, 2012)

Would it be prehensile?


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## Dokid (Sep 21, 2012)

YaoiMeowmaster said:


> Would it be prehensile?



doubt it since it's a wolf tail.


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## Dreaming (Sep 21, 2012)

Ho shit, that's pretty good. I'm looking at the picture of the tail and wondering how heavy the fur is though.


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## softi (Sep 24, 2012)

why are you so asian

edit: (you're making us look bad)


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## liang (Feb 1, 2013)

Finally getting around to working on this again.  Switching from stepper motors to winch servos and redesigned the base.  Will send out to have it laser cut next week in the interim here's a video explaining how the device works:

[video=youtube;1GJNooFwNw8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GJNooFwNw8[/video]


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## Kalmor (Feb 1, 2013)

Nice work! Are you planning on selling these in the future or is it just for you?


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## liang (Feb 2, 2013)

Raptros said:


> Nice work! Are you planning on selling these in the future or is it just for you?



It likely isn't worth the time for me to try to sell them, but if it works I'd probably willing to put the designs and vector files up so anyone can attempt it on their own.


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