Interesting As Fuck...
- Thread starter 717jet
- Start date
Interesting
The drumming Energizer Bunny robot you saw in the TV commercials was built by Grant Imahara from ILM/Mythbusters
In early 2008, the Eveready Battery Company commissioned Industrial Light & Magic to build a new generation of Energizer Bunny mascots for TV commercial production. My eight-person team had a three-month timeframe to complete three new mechanical bunnies plus two nonmotorized “posers.” My responsibility: all of the electronics and radio control systems.
Each Bunny has a custom circuit board and custom RC relays, with multiple 8-bit microcontrollers for interpreting the radio control commands and executing multistep movements — for example: stop beating, raise arms, twirl sticks, stop twirling, lower arms, and resume beating.
One of the most challenging parts of the project was that (for legal, truth-in-advertising reasons) the Bunny had to actually run on consumer-grade Energizer batteries. But with more than a dozen onboard motors — including two heavy-duty drive motors — the Bunny had massive power requirements, far outside the capacity of off-the shelf batteries and battery packs. My solution was to wire tons of them in parallel. I stuffed a total of 44 AA batteries into a banana-shaped pack, like an AK-47 clip, which hides along with all the other electronics in the drum body.
https://makezine.com/article/craft/imahara/
In early 2008, the Eveready Battery Company commissioned Industrial Light & Magic to build a new generation of Energizer Bunny mascots for TV commercial production. My eight-person team had a three-month timeframe to complete three new mechanical bunnies plus two nonmotorized “posers.” My responsibility: all of the electronics and radio control systems.
Each Bunny has a custom circuit board and custom RC relays, with multiple 8-bit microcontrollers for interpreting the radio control commands and executing multistep movements — for example: stop beating, raise arms, twirl sticks, stop twirling, lower arms, and resume beating.
One of the most challenging parts of the project was that (for legal, truth-in-advertising reasons) the Bunny had to actually run on consumer-grade Energizer batteries. But with more than a dozen onboard motors — including two heavy-duty drive motors — the Bunny had massive power requirements, far outside the capacity of off-the shelf batteries and battery packs. My solution was to wire tons of them in parallel. I stuffed a total of 44 AA batteries into a banana-shaped pack, like an AK-47 clip, which hides along with all the other electronics in the drum body.
https://makezine.com/article/craft/imahara/
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