Nuts and Volts - September 2014

that — even though the dancers movements are essentially completely disconnected from any musical soundtrack — human observers tend to comment about how well the dancers seem to be moving in time with the music. They’ll usually ask how we managed to get them to synchronize so well. Seeing patterns in random motions — even when none are actually present — is a psychological phenomenon known as Apophenia:

Apophenia is the experience of seeing patterns or connections in random or meaningless data. The term is attributed to Klaus Conrad by Peter Brugger, who defined it as the “unmotivated seeing of connections” accompanied by a “specific experience of an abnormal meaningfulness,”

but it has come to represent the human tendency to seek patterns in random information in general, such as with gambling and paranormal phenomena. (Definition courtesy of Wikipedia.)

Essentially, this means anyone can build animatronics, puppets, or marionettes that — to the observer — appear to have deliberate or pre-programmed motions when in reality the motions are nothing more than a simple motor and a crank!

Animation Motivation

In our trio, the guitar-playing skeleton is animated through the use of a Tamiya three-speed crank-axle gearbox purchased from Pololu (Figure 2). It was powered by adapting an old Nokia 3.5V 500 mA cell phone charger and connecting it directly to the motor. The