Animatronics Cats

If you are following these robotic projects in order, then these cats were commissioned the year after I made the orange owl. This remains my most ambitious animatronics project to date. Each cat is identical to the other and has eight degrees of freedom internally. They sit on top of a branch and fight with each-other. Like the owls, they are now driven by a bit of custom electronics that I designed that plays back the motion data and audio from a SD card.

If you ever happen to be in Oakland, Ca. on Halloween or the night before, he also puts on a marionette show several times a night for younger children. It is definitely worth taking a look at. He organizes professional puppeteers to help out and spends a considerable amount of time preparing new content for his shows each year. Here is a video from 2011 (I think). This isn’t the whole show but just a small segment of it. I played a small part in this section of the marionette show. There are three things in the video that are motorized. I built the mechanisms for them.