The Curious Crow Automata

One of the great treats of going back to university is that one gets to put once habitual self aside and explore territories yet unknown and formerly forbidden. As a part of the Media and Arts Technology course we were asked by Dr. Andrew Mcpherson, to find some obsolete technological junk and give it a new life. A practice referred to by some: Cruft Fest, by others: Toy Hacking. 

For the first time I had no choice but do that scary thing and ruin a perfectly good (if unloved and thrown away toy). Now lets hope that I will be able to stop before I inspect insides of all appliances and gadgets in the house. I feel a huge relive and a tingle of excitement being able to abandon restrictions, and do to electronics what I always did to textiles and jewellery.

The Curious Crow, created as a result of the Cruft Fest project, is an automata that looks around curiously, moves its beak and taps its fingers when prompted to do so remotely. It is about 34 cm high x 24 cm in diameter that was made of mixed materials using following items: 

• Antenna from the unloved remote controlled car
• Found toy gears and bits
  
• Engine form forgotten cordless screw driver
  
• Random scraps or fur, metal, wood and plastic
• Kinetic design of fingers following Fingers MkIII by Nik Ramage
• Animatronic eyes design by LGProspects
• Arduino UNO and three micro servos

The links to the video of animatroinic eyes could be found here and the workings of the feet here .

Take a look at what others created on Flicker.