Monkey Business - Mimicking Toy Monkey Tracked Using Kinect

Submitted by Jared; August 06, 2011


I need to have one of these. Seriously. Everyone should have their own mechanical monkey hanging from their walls that will always wave back when you wave to it. Always there when you'd like to jam a little bit of "Monkey See, Monkey Do" just to pass the time. In all seriousness, the tech behind this cute little mimicking monkey is quite impressive. What's also impressive is that it was all accomplished using cheap hardware components that are readily available in a variety of stores with open source software and a toy monkey purchased from Ebay for $1! The design implementation involved a body tracking sensor, in tis case a Kinect, a hidden computer that analyses and converts the tracking data using OpenNI Framework, OSCeleton and OSC along with Processing in order to process the data into movement angles to be sent to an Arduino inside the monkey carcass...I mean, stuffed monkey toy. 10 servo's where installed in order to move the body joints which simulate the users movements in the toy monkey's internal wireframe skeleton.

The flexible suspension of the ape in combination with fast responding motors allow an astonishing quick-witted behavior and a tempting interaction experience for the user.

For more information (and hopefully how to either purchase or build one of these bad boys!) visit subtours.com


Tags: Arduino, Monkey Business, Open Source, OpenNI, OSC, OSCeleton, Processing