Mechanical eyeball for animatronic devices
AssigneeFacebook Technologies, LLC
InventorsKirk Erik Burgess, Antonio Yamil Layon Halun, Sebastian Sztuk
Life of this patent
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Abstract
An animatronic device includes a mechanical eyeball configured to rotate about a first rotational axis and a second rotational axis that intersect at a fixed center point. A controller is configured to generate eye movement instructions that cause the animatronic device to rotate the mechanical eyeball about at least one of the first rotational axis and the second rotational axis. The eye movement instructions are generated based on an eye tracking system used to track movement of an eye of a user. The controller maps the tracked eye movement to movement of the mechanical eyeball and generates eye movement instructions based on the mapping.
Claims17
A system comprising:
- a controller configured to generate eye movement instructions;
- and
- an animatronic device comprising a mechanical eyeball configured to rotate about a center point in accordance with eye movement instructions, the mechanical eyeball having a first rotational axis and a second rotational axis that both intersect at the center point, the animatronic device configured to:
- actuate a first driver and a second driver based on the instructions, the first driver configured to cause the mechanical eyeball to rotate about the second rotational axis and the second driver configured to cause the mechanical eyeball to rotate about the first rotational axis, and
- measure, using one or more sensors, one or more rotated encoder values that each correspond to an amount of rotation of a first encoder bar and a second encoder bar about the first rotational axis and the second rotational axis.
An animatronic device comprising:
- a first mechanical eyeball configured to rotate about a center point, wherein a first rotational axis of the first mechanical eyeball and a second rotational axis of the first mechanical eyeball intersect at the center point, and the first mechanical eyeball comprises:
- a first encoder bar configured to rotate about the second rotational axis, the first encoder bar including a first encoding strip, and
- a second encoder bar configured to rotate about the first rotational axis, the second encoder bar including a second encoding strip,
- wherein the animatronic device is configured to actuate rotation of the first mechanical eyeball about one or more of the first rotational axis and the second rotational axis based on instructions provided by a controller.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.