Computational Design of Mechanical Characters
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN cites it as an example of computational mechanism design, especially in threads on gears, linkages and animatronics.
What it is
A Disney Research SIGGRAPH 2013 demo of an interactive system that lets non-experts design animated mechanical characters. The user sketches motion curves and the system generates optimized mechanisms and gear trains for 3D printing.
Recommended by 1 HN commenters across 1 different months, 2013 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Recommends 0-_-0 · 2020-11 · on “Disney unveiled an animatronic robot with the same gaze as humans”
Here's a good Siggraph 2013 demo about "Computational Design of Mechanical Characters" from Disney: [this video]
Cites dfbrown · 2013-08 · on “Five Hundred and Seven Mechanical Movements”
This reminded me of a recent paper on automatically designing animated mechanical characters. Some of these movements could be used to incorporate different kinds of animations into these characters. [this video]
Cites downboots · 2025-06 · on “Expanding Racks [video]”
Is there a standard way to formally describe a mechanical machine? Similar to how a .obj file defines a 3d shape? Some standard way of describing piece types, interactions, properties, movement ranges, etc. Then one could have a computer use the format to learn/find interesting configurations based on a catalog like [LINK] especially if paired with simulation like done in this Disney research project using gears and linkages [this video]