Audio-Animatronics
Audio-Animatronics (sometimes shortened to AAs) are a form of mechatronic puppetry trademarked by the Walt Disney Company, and the source of the term animatronics.
They move and often synchronize with audio from an external sound system (generally a recorded speech or song), and are usually fixed to whatever supports them.
It is a room full of tropical creatures with eye and facial actions synchronized to a musical score entirely by electromechanical means.
The Audio-Animatronic cast of the musical revue uses tones recorded on tape to vibrate a metal reed that closes a circuit to trigger a relay, which sends a pulse of electricity to a mechanism that causes a pneumatic valve to move part of the figure.
Figures' movements have a neutral "natural resting position" that the limb or part returns to when there is no electric pulse present.
[5] Pneumatic actuators are powerful enough to move heavier objects like simulated limbs, while hydraulics are used more for large figures.
On/off type movement would cause an arm to be lifted (for example) either up over an animatronic’s head or down next to its body, but with no halting or change of speed in between.
The Enchanted Tiki Room remains a pneumatic theatrical set, primarily due to the leakage concerns, as the Audio-Animatronic figures are above the audience's heads.
With modern digital computers controlling the device, the number of channels is virtually unlimited, allowing more complex, realistic motion.
Compliance improves this situation by allowing limbs to continue past the points where they are programmed to stop; they then return quickly to the "intended" position, much as real organic body parts do.
Figures that do not have a high degree of motion flexibility, such as the older A-1 series for President Lincoln, may only need to have their skin replaced every ten years.
The most recent A-100 series human AAs, like the figure for President Barack Obama, also include flexion actuators that move the cheeks and eyebrows to permit more realistic expressions; however, the skin wears out more quickly and needs replacement at least every five years.
This more sophisticated technology can include cameras and other sensors feeding signals to a computer, which processes the information and makes choices about what to say and do.
[8] In June 2018, it was revealed that Disney Imagineering had created autonomous, self-correcting aerial stunt robots called stuntronics.
The Jack Sparrow figure is based on the actor that portrays him, Johnny Depp, and features his voice and facial mold.
The Audio-Animatronic Indiana Jones figures inside Indiana Jones Adventure: Temple of the Crystal Skull at Tokyo DisneySea resemble actor Harrison Ford, unlike the original figures found at the Disneyland version, Temple of the Forbidden Eye.
These Audio-Animatronics were succeeded by the figures in use in the Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge lands at Disneyland and Disney's Hollywood Studios in 2019, such as Hondo Ohnaka in the Millennium Falcon – Smugglers Run attraction.
