Michael Scott Animatronic Face

My animatronic face moves his mouth to "speak" one of the character's famous lines. I used an ultrasonic sensor to activate the sound on my laptop speaker. The animatronic is able to move its mouth from the servo motor. I also used an Arduino board and had the code read in Arduino IDE. My animatronic is made from wood, cardboard, and a 3D printed part attached to the servo motor.

Item Quantity Price

1. Arduino UNO rev 3, 1 ct., Arduino Starter Kit
2. Breadboard, 1 ct., Arduino Starter Kit
3. Micro servo motor SG90, 1 ct., Arduino Starter Kit
4. Ultrasonic sensor, 1 ct., Arduino Starter Kit
5. Wires, ~10, Arduino Starter Kit
6. 3D printed part, 1 ct., NA
7. Strews, 4 ct., NA
8. Hot Glue, 1 ct., NA
9. Tape, 1 ct., NA
10. Cardboard , 1 ct., NA
11. Wood parts, 1 ct., $3.75
12. Zinc plated corner brace 2ct., $2.97

For my structure i used a small rectangular wood plank board as the base. To have the face supported, I used two 2x16 in. long wood planks and two zinc plated corner braces.

I 3D printed a supporting joint to connect the servo motor and the bottom mouth piece to the larger side of the support. The spring design was to evolve to more motion options in future process.

I used my breadboard to connect the ground and 5V from the Arduino UNO to the whole circuit. The servo motor has a wire to the ground, 5V, and one to pin 9 on the Arduino board. The ultrasonic sensor has Trig connected to pin 6 and Echo connected to pin 7 on the Arduino board.

I programmed the Arduino board using the Arduino IDE and Java through Processing for the audio to play through my laptop speaker.

https://youtube.com/shorts/UHzVape4eQc?feature=share

Lessons learned:

1. How to connect everything on the broad and to work in sync.
2. Doing more testing for trial and error and giving myself more time.

Improvements:

1. I would add two more interactive features by adding more servo motors.
2. I think I would change the structure to work with more chance of flexibility on the joints.