Friday, May 01, 2020
This Animatronic Mouth Mimics Speech With Servos
Hackaday: Of the 43 muscles that comprise the human face, only a few are actually important to speaking. And yet replicating the movements of the mouth by mechanical means always seems to end up only partly convincing. Servos and linkages can only approximate the complex motions the lips, cheeks, jaw, and tongue are capable of. Still, there are animatronics out there that make a good go at the job, of which this somewhat creepy mechanical mouth is a fine example.
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This is such a cool and impressive design. The article here talks about how the overall design is relatively simple though. It uses a lot of 3D printed components and the control software that it uses is just a text to speech system where you just have to import the text and the mouth will replicate the standard movement of a mouth. They translate the text to a series of movements that the mouth can make that make it very realistic. I can see this being a cheap alternative to some of the more complicated technologies that Disney uses. They describe this as fairly accessible technology to people and maybe even consumers. With the rise of 3D printing I feel like more people are going to be able to make simpler versions of this maybe with an online tutorial or something like that. This is definitely something that I’d someday like to try out!
This is honestly so cool, but also frightening. I think that is mostly because I have been watching a lot of Westworld and mid-quarantine I am becoming a radical conspiracy theorist. So while this is awesome technology that is a strong thought in my mind telling me that this animatronic mouth could be the beginning of robot takeover. It is extra cool because so many of these parts were 3D printed. I feel like everyday I hear a new story of inventive people utilizing 3D printers in new ways. From art to technology, to fashion and textiles. The 3D printer is quickly becoming one of the most valuable tools of this generation. Its also cool to hear about the intense study of how the human face moves and functions and how they translated that into an animatronic. The attached videos are the best part of the article because of the clear demonstrations that they provide.
I'm a little creeped out by that bunny with vampire fangs. This is really interesting stuff and also shows the complexity needed to replicate the human mouth (or any human body part for that matter). In looking at the videos I can clearly see the jerking of the servo motors during playback. This is where the next steps should focus. How do you smooth those motions to be more like a human mouth? Is that a need for more servo motors or do we need to look at creating a smoother servo motor? This has a lot of practical applications in theatre, especially when the need arises to create the blood thirsty hound that haunts the mansion. Live animals are great, but sometimes you do need a robot to get the effect and scare the pants off the audience. I'd like to read more about the developments shown off in the article and videos. I's also like to see if they have considered a way to map the movement of a human mouth using probes, and sensors much in a similar way that they do when mapping the brain.
I honestly did not enjoy watching that second video. But I guess that's good? I just found the movement weirdly realistic, although I think it was still a little stuck in the uncanny valley because of the way that none of the rest of the face was moving much around the mouth. Nevertheless, this is incredibly impressive and probably one of the best animation mouths I have ever seen. Though Disney and other major theme parks normally do a good job with trying to make the mouths of their animatronics look natural, a lot of times that is achieved my making one repeated motion in time with the words. Though they normally get a pretty natural cadence of opening and closing, the distinct shapes achieved in the mouth in this article give it a one up.
Oh my gosh. I thought this was cool but didn't quite get it until it zoomed in on the bear singing "Forever Young," and then I just started laughing. It's not super realistic, but it's a lot closer than your basic single servo animatronic mouth, and it's just real enough to hit the uncanny valley and be a little bit disturbing. One of it's biggest problems seems to be speed; when the syllables start coming faster it looks more like a bad animatronic mouth where it's just open and kind of quivering. But once it slows down a little for the chorus you can really see what it's saying. I'd love to see this with a slow, creepy monolouge as input. Something kind of Ed Norton style creepy. I imagine that would just be a blast. All jokes aside though, this is a really cool project, and I'm surprised that you can do as much as this guy did without more advanced components.
Animatronics have always fascinated me. As technology advances, and gets smaller and smaller, animatronics are growing more and more advanced. Upon reading the article and taking a close look at the pictures of the mouth, I was surprised to find that there are nine whole servo motors in the animatronic mouth. Nine servos are a lot of servos to fit in such a compact model. I always find it interesting to learn about various artists processes in creating such objects, and how well these animatronics can mimic natural, organic movements. Also, the fact that this person was able to create this model with not much more than a 3d printer, a handful of servos, an Arduino, and a couple lines of code? Simply put, fantastic. I have always been a maker at heart, though have not had access to all the resources these people use to make all these amazing creations. Also, sometimes I feel I just don’t have the creativity to come up with such incredible designs. Overall, this model was awesome, well built, and well executed.
I first of all, absolutely hated reading this and watching this video because I am so scared of technology, probably because I have been watching Westworld. I really would rather not have the world get taken over by robots. While its super creepy, I do think that its a fantastic new piece of technology. A lot of animatronic mouths I have seen in the past have been much sketchier than this one, and I think this one moves pretty well considering it isn't a real mouth. I think that something a lot of animatronic mouths dont consider is the left and right motion that a lot of jaws make, which hinders then from looking truly realistic. In addition, the fact that there is nothing inside the mouth that moves with it, like the sides of our gums, gives it away. It is really cool though, and I cant wait to see how they fine tune it and eventually use it in things.
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