Bonnie Animatronic

Demo / Media

The media shows the project at different stages: printed parts, internal wiring, Bottango animation control, and the final animatronic face coming together.

Bottango Animation Control

The project went beyond simple motor testing. I used Bottango to map digital animation timelines to real physical servo movement.

Internal Servo + Wiring Layout

Inside the head, the motion depended on a dense layout of servos, wiring, rods, linkages, and mechanical mounts.

Eye Mechanism Debugging

The eye mechanism was one of the hardest systems because the wire-driven design added torque and strain to the small servos.

This was my breakout engineering project. I originally decided to build Bonnie’s head because I was a huge fan of Five Nights at Freddy’s when I was 10. I was fascinated by the idea of these robots that looked so cool and lifelike in the game, but did not actually exist in real life. Ever since then, I held onto the idea that maybe one day I could build something like that myself. When I went back home for the summer as a first-year Berkeley student, I had not yet learned any electronics or real engineering, but I decided to take on the challenge of recreating Bonnie’s head and making it move the way it did in the video game. This project is special to me because, as a child, the animatronics from the game sparked my curiosity and helped motivate me toward engineering. In many ways, this project was a love letter to my younger self, proving that I could bring an idea to life. It showed me that with enough effort and diligence, I could create and build things from scratch. I did not start with experience, but I knew the only way to learn was by doing, so I took something that inspired me and turned it into something real.

The project forced me to learn everything from scratch. I had to buy a 3D printer and figure out how to 3D print parts, assemble mechanical linkages, learn how to wire things into a microcontroller, impliment 11 motors into a servo driver, upload Arduino code, and control real hardware. After that, I learned Bottango, an open-source animation software, so I could assign digital animations to real physical motors through adding 3D sprites, fixing joints, and adding digital motors which controlled the ones in real life. That turned the project from a difficult 3D printing project into something that could move with life through timing and personality.

The hardest part was making all of the physical systems cooperate. I burned out 3 motors, fought tolerance issues, and struggled with mechanisms that needed to be rigid enough to hold position while still moving smoothly. The eye mechanism was especially difficult because the wire-driven design placed too much torque on the small servos and limited the range of motion. It worked well enough to prove the concept, but it also showed me exactly what I would redesign in a future version.

By the end, the project worked. I was able to create fluid real-life movement and prove that the animatronic head was possible and functional. More importantly, the project changed the way I saw engineering. It taught me that engineering is not just about already knowing what to do. It is about being willing to learn, fail, burn motors, fix mistakes, and keep building until it works, then you make it better.