Overwatch-Inspired Baby Bastion Animatronic Puppet

According to “JON-A-TRON,” aka full-time designer Jonathan Odom’s write-up, there are lots of DIY robot projects on the Internet, but many of them lack a way of expressing emotion. Odom, who previously worked in special effects, decided to take a different path with his Overwatch-inspired Baby Bastion Puppet. He notes that the Bastion character has a lot of emotion for not having a face, so in order to convey this as a puppet, he added an articulating eye and jaw, along with a neck mechanism to allow it to look around.

The eye mechanism uses a servo to control the left-right rotation of the eye, and another to allow it to look up and down. Adding to this expressiveness, is a third servo that uses a pair of linkages to open and close a pair of eyelids. Finally, another servo actuates thecomparatively simple jaw mechanism, allowing it to move and express emotion via a bank five of servo testers. Odom notes that this could also be done with an RC controller/receiver, which would be a more natural (though more expensive) setup.

Along with the expressive motion ability, he paid special attention to the paint job of the 3D-printed robo-puppet. In order to simulate battle damage on the green printed side pieces, he applied a chrome base boat, then a mixture of salt and water to allow for the green top coat to dry adhere poorly, allowing it to be scraped off. The resulting build is really excellent, and features a few techniques that would be great to remember for your next robot project!