Jurassic World Kamigami™ Robot
Build-it-yourself robot dinosaur
Kamigami™, the build-it-yourself robotic kit and Jurassic World have come together to create an innovative breed of dinosaur robots – Kamigami™ Jurassic World Robots! Featuring two of the most popular dinosaurs from the Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom movie – Blue and Indoraptor, these robots are designed to move like real dinosaurs with life-like "bi-pedal" movements! Kids can build their own robot raptor by folding and snapping together the shell sheets onto the mechanized core-module. Connect to the mobile app to customize your robot's movements, interactions and sounds. These are a great STEM toy because it makes building your own robot easy, yet rewarding – no engineering degree or tools required.
Project Overview:
Mattel has just obtained the Jurassic World toy license from Universal Pictures. With the release of the 2018 motion picture, Jurassic World - Fallen Kingdom on the horizon, Mattel partnered with Dash Robotics to design and develop an App driven STEM toy (science, technology, engineering, math). At this time, Mattel has also licensed our Kamigami Robots technology and wanted to produce them as the 2 main raptor characters – Blue and Indoraptor.
Challenges:
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Use life-like bipedal walking locomotion.
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Design the 2 raptor characters as folded robots
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Tool-less user assembly.
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Cost of Goods below $20.
Roles @ Dash Robotics:
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Industrial Design
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Production Art
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Build Experience
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Technical Illustration
Character Shell Sheets
Build Instructions
Development Process
Life-like legged locomotion is rare and difficult to execute. Our first goal was to create a proof of concept that best met our design criteria. The legs must have an alternating gait where it lifts up one leg off the ground, while the other leg drives the robot forward at 1 meter per second. Exploration of the double 4-bar linkage provided the target raptor leg movement we aspired to achieve.
Real raptors are 100% bipedal. Since manufacturing a bipedal robot for a $50.00 toy was not realistically feasible, we had to make compelling compromises. The robot raptor was configured as a “reverse” trike, where it balanced on it’s 2 front arms and 1 alternating foot. Having a triangle base where one of the points is constantly shifting, made it very unstable. To overcome this, most of its mass were strategically placed toward the front, over its arms.
We began to identify industrial design and engineering constraints. Cost conscience component selection drove the overall size requirements. As the industrial designer, I influenced the arrangement and orientation of the components to best fit a design envelope that best represents a raptor and its movements while maintaining the very difficult bipedal locomotion feature.
The legs were meticulously designed to stay true to the actual characters, maintain functionality and match the geometry of the sheet formed shell.
The arms were the most controversial feature in this project. Ideally, the raptors were purely bipedal and did not use their arms while moving. In order for the alternating legs to be the only source of propulsion, the arms must have constant contact on the surface and bear most of the weight to stay upright.
To maximize the weight, the plastic arms were injection molded around a metal core.
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The arm design was a balanced decision between functionality and authenticity to the characters they are designed after.
As part of the Kamigami™ brand DNA, the Character Shells are made of color printed‒die cut flat plastic sheets which the users bend, fold and snap together to form the raptor’s Head body and tail. Both models will be sharing the same molded chassis. What distinguished them from each other will be the art and structure of these character sheets.
The forms created by the structures were strategically crafted to highlight the differences between the 2 raptors.Other keys features like the articulated tail and mouth added to play value.
