We are finding that more and more students, kids, parents, people from nearly all age groups want to be involved in some kind of animatronic. Some want to play with animatronic robotic eyes, some want an arm, some a hand, and some want a whole robot.
But there is one barrier common to all:
Not many can afford animatronics.
The transition from a “toy” like the cool animatronic monkey head from years back to a full-on advanced PIDD controlled electric, hydraulic, or pneumatic animatronic robot is a HUGE leap. But some have such a passion for having an animatronic that they have bought that monkey, for example, hacked into it, and started re-wiring, re-programming, re-building the whole thing! That is a LOT of work!
We recognize the need, and know that right now EVERYBODY is on a budget. So why not make an in-between? An animatronic platform that you can immediately play with out of the box BUT also encourages you to get in the guts of it, make new facial motions with more servos, plug in ANY controller you want and program it with simple codes or even stretch it to use complex computer vision algorithms.
Here it is: Mecha Hitsu Gen2
An Open-Source Animatronic Platform
Many skins are available for one animatronic skull
5 years in development and leveraging technologies and manufacturing processes we have recently discovered we have a way of giving you what you want at a decent price.
PLUS you can change the skins! No kidding. One skull, many faces.
Those of you out there making animatronics at a professional level know that we typically go the other way: start with the sculpt, then to the underskull, then mechanize. This is different, but the Mecha Hitsu Gen2 can be put to work immediately in your theme park, Halloween display, research labs, etc. No huge overhead costs, no long lead-time waiting for the custom sculpt, molding, scanning, modeling, cnc’ing, assembly and programming of a Custom Android.
We will be posting videos of the Mecha Hitsu Gen2 from clients that have made exceptional animatronic displays, research, demonstrations and more using their Mecha Hitsu Gen2 platform.
This is only the beginning…
2012