SMADs: Mindboggling Servo Linkages in Motion

Описание: This is a follow-on to a couple of earlier videos about our SMADs (Steve and Max’s Awesome Displays) -- the first shows my two pseudo robot heads “talking” to each other by flashing their SMAD eyes in Morse code (   • SMADs: Robot Heads “Talking” in Morse Code  ) -- the second shows my chum Steve Manley’s SMAD eyes articulated with servos (   • SMADs: First Glimpse of Robot Head with Se...  ).

Whenever I’ve seen anything like this before, the eyes have been attached to pan-and-tilt mechanisms such as the Mini Pan-and-Tilt Kit from Adafruit (https://www.adafruit.com/product/1967). In this case we start with a sub-assembly that consists of a gimbal with an associated servo that performs one of the motions such as tilting. This entire sub-assembly is then mounted on top of a second sub-assembly that consists of its own gimbal-servo combo that performs the other motion such as panning.

The thing is that Steve has implemented this pan-and-tilt functionality in a way I’ve never seen before. He just sent me the animation illustrated in this video with his kind permission for me to post it here on my Cool Beans Blog channel. I for one am blown away by this solution!