Diseño y construcción de un prototipo animatrónico de cabeza y cuello para la promoción y difusión de la Carrera de Mecatrónica

Abstract

In this project, an animatronic head and neck prototype was designed and built based on a character from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The main objective was to develop an interactive doll to promote the Mechatronics degree programme, integrating mechanics, electronics and voice control systems with artificial intelligence. Computer-aided design (CAD) tools were used for the mechanical design, notably Autodesk-Fusion 360 to design and model the internal structures, complemented by organic mesh editing software such as Meshmixer to optimise the external parts of the character. Likewise, 3D printing manufacturing techniques were used to materialise the CAD designs, relying on the Creality K1C printer and the Creality Print programme to edit these parts, optimise their orientation and density, and configure some of the printing parameters. The resulting animatronic system is controlled by a Raspberry Pi 4B with 4GB of RAM, which manages a voice assistant powered by a lightweight language model and voice recognition and synthesis algorithms. The animatronic prototype is capable of interacting with users through voice commands, simulating speech in real time, moving its head and opening or closing its jaw in synchronisation with the assistant's spoken response. This document details the CAD design processes for the character's structures and casing, the integration of servomotors to provide movement to the neck and jaw, as well as the technical challenges overcome during development (e.g., the revision of mechanisms due to torque limitations of certain servomotors). The results demonstrate the viability of a low-cost animatronic and reinforce the importance of iteration in engineering: through successive redesigns and tests, a functional model was achieved that combines a faithful appearance to the character with reliable and safe mechatronic operation.