CAD/fabrication design tool for kinetic wire animatronic mechanisms (Bächer).
Methods and corresponding systems that are useful in design and fabrication of kinetic wire mechanisms or characters. The method includes a computational technique for the design of kinetic wire mechanisms tailored for fabrication on consumer-grade hardware such as a desktop CNC bending device. The method takes as input a skeletal animation of the mechanism to be fabricated and estimates, from the skeletal animation, a cable-driven and compliant wire structure, which matches user-selected keyframes. To enable localized deformations, the technique involves shaping the mechanism's body (i.e., the wire) into functional spring-like entities at a set of locations along the length of the mechanism's body. The method involves determining where on the wire body to place these spring-like entities, determining which types or configurations of spring-like entities should be placed at each of these locations, and optimizing parameters of each user-selected spring-like entity for use at the locations on the wire mechanism.
BACKGROUND 1. Field of the Description (1) The present description relates, in general, to structures or mechanisms formed of wire or having a wire skeletal structure, and, more particularly, to a computer-assisted design and fabrication method for wire structures or mechanisms that are compliant so that they can be actuated to bend to two or more positions without plastic deformation. Such compliant and actuated wire structures can be labeled “kinetic wire mechanisms” and can be used to provide animated characters or characters with moving body parts. 2. Relevant Background (2) There are numerous applications for mechanisms and structures that are fabricated from wire or include a wire support structure or skeleton, and it is often desirable that these wire mechanisms be designed for actuation or driven movement or to be kinetic wire mechanisms. Such kinetic wire mechanisms can be used to provide an animated character for a show or display. By manually bending and assembling individual wire components, sculptors have mastered the art of designing wire characters that consist of rigid wire components jointed together at their ends. However, these assemblies usually are not compliant and are very time consuming to create, with their functioning and design being difficult to repeat and relying upon the skill and experience of the sculptor. There remains a need for automated or computer-assisted design tools for use in designing and fabricating kinetic wire mechanisms. (3) Indus
1. A system for design and fabrication of kinetic wire mechanisms, comprising: a data storage storing a skeletal animation of an object; a system controller running a design module processing the skeletal animation to generate a model of the object; and a wire bending machine, wherein the design module receives user input identifying a set of keyframes in the skeletal animation defining poses for the object, wherein the design module processes the set of keyframes to determine locations for entities on the model of the object that can be actuated to be elastically deformed into two or more positions, wherein the data storage further stores a database of templates of the entities that can be formed of a length of wire, by bending with a machine to have the spring functionality of the entities, wherein the design module identifies a set of the templates for each of the determined locations, wherein the wire bending machine operates to bend the length of wire based on the model of the object to fabricate a kinetic wire mechanism including a plurality of the entities with locations and configurations matching those of the templates inserted into the model of the object. ||
9. A system for design and fabrication of kinetic wire mechanisms, comprising: a data storage storing an animation including a set of keyframes defining differing poses for an object; a system controller running a computational tool that processes the animation to generate a wire structure model of the object matching the keyframes, wherein the computational tool determines locations for entities in the wire structure model to be bent with elastic deformation into two or more positions to provide movements of the object in the animation, wherein the data storage further stores a database of templates of the entities to be formed by bending a length of wire, and wherein the computational tool inserts one of the templates at each of the determined locations; and a wire bending machine operating to bend an input length of wire based on the wire structure model of the object to fabricate a kinetic wire mechanism including a plurality of the entities with locations and configurations matching the templates inserted into the wire structure model. ||
15. A method of designing a kinetic wire mechanism tailored for fabrication on a desktop bending machine, comprising: providing a generic template of a first entity with spring functionalities that cannot be formed via operation of a wire bending machine operating on an input length of wire and a plurality of templates of second entities that can be actuated to be elastically deformed into two or more positions and are suited for fabrication via wire bending; receiving as input a rig of an object and a set of target poses for the object; with the input, generating a wire structure model based on the rig and the set of target poses; identifying one or more locations for positioning the second entities in the wire structure model based on the set of target poses; positioning one or more of the second entities configured based on the generic template in the one or more locations; optimizing the positioned second entities configured based on the generic template by calibrating stiffness; for each of the optimized and positioned second entities, determining a matching set of the templates; and in the wire structure model, replacing each of the optimized and positioned second entities based on the generic template with a fabricable entity defined by one of the templates from a corresponding one of the matching sets of the templates.