Mechatronic head, 18 DOF — Noddy Chung
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Mechatronics Computer vision Swansea University, 2021–22

Mechatronic
head,
18 DOF

An original humanoid skull with eighteen degrees of freedom, built to hold a real facial expression and to follow a face across a room. I drew the mechanism, designed the electronics, printed and assembled every part, and wrote the control and vision code. It won the W Renwick prize for best software-based project of the year.

RoleProject owner, solo build
Motion18 degrees of freedom, servo driven
StackFusion 360 · SLA / FDM · Python · OpenCV · PCA9685
AwardW Renwick Best Software-Based Project
eighteen channels live — the head holding an expression and finding a face Hover for sound
Front view of the printed animatronic skull with servo-driven eyes and jaw
eyes, lids, brow, jaw — all independent
The animatronic head running in front of a screen showing its Python control script
expression sets, called from one script

Drawn as a
mechanism

Eighteen axes in the volume of a skull means the linkages decide the design, not the face. Every bracket, pivot and horn was modelled and checked for travel and collision before printing, so the assembly went together once instead of four times.

Eyes — pan, tilt and lids on separate axes, gaze driven by the tracker.
Face — brow and mouth corners pull on a sprung line for expression.
Drive — PCA9685 channels from a Pi, expressions stored as angle sets.
CAD assembly render of the animatronic skull linkages
assembly render — travel checked before print
The animatronic head wired to a breadboard and servo driver on the bench
bench state — camera under the chin, 18 channels out
tracking, on a loop — sound is on the clip above

It looks
back at you

A camera under the chin feeds OpenCV; the detected face position becomes a gaze target, and the eye axes chase it while the lids and brow keep the expression alive. The same interface plays canned expression sets on demand, which is what a show operator actually needs.

the moment it first tracked a face across the room is why I want to work on shows.

Why it matters for themed work

figure motion
Character believability lives in the linkage design and the easing, not the part count.
show control
Stored expression sets, triggered live — the same pattern as a scene cue stack.
maintainability
Printed parts, standard servos, one driver board: rebuildable by whoever inherits it.
Next: sign-translation gloves → All work chungnoddy0808@gmail.com