The Head

So, I'm going to start building with the head. This will stick out from my chest, just below my neck. It will have a neck with two axes of movement (up and down and left and right) and an eye stalk sticking out the front with the same two axes of movement, but controlled independently. I'll get on to the method of control later.

The first challenge was to design a structure that could move freely in the two axes required, with that movement being controlled by one motor for each axis. I played around for a while and came up with this:

As you can see, it's made with two Lego NXT motors and a bunch of Lego Technic parts. The part that sticks straight up from the neck will be used to attach a spring betwwen the head and the top motor in order to give the whole head a "neutral" position of looking straight up instead of hanging down. I'm not going to attach that until the very last, though, as I want to calibrate it to the toal weight of the head, which is currently unknown.