The “Impossible” Design of Wheatley from Portal 2 | Mk III Animatronic

if you've ever wondered if you have your own Wheatley in real life or how you could build a personality core in this video we'll dive into the details of how I designed my latest version of an animatronic weedly so let's get started first how big are cores exactly well the game model has quite a large design but I'm going to annoy people by saying that's not accurate it's just a compromise for better storytelling and gameplay why well Wheatley is such an important character he needs to be easily seen from a variety of distances and if he were a more plausibly compact design his Charming detailed expressions and emotive outbursts would be lost also he would look absolutely tiny when mounted on gladys's body but this isn't just like my opinion man well Coors can navigate VIA the management rail system assistance is needed for them to be inserted into the interface ports throughout the facility and while Chell can effortlessly carry Wheatley via the portal gun cores were seemingly handled by average humans on the regular case in point we see Henry from the lab rat comic holding an early core now that core isn't named but it seems to be a much more human friendly design despite the hand crushing gear train we even get a nice profile view of him with the core we don't know Henry's height but giving him the average American male height of 69 inches this puts the diameter of the core at about 16.5 inches now I actually didn't consider the lab rat comic when designing my core the size of which was actually just chosen to be proportional to this super cool round LCD which makes mine about three-quarter scale to the lab rat scale at about 333 millimeters in diameter also yes I mix measurement systems in my designs all the time it's my legal obligation as an American to do so and no it doesn't bother me it's like being ambidextrous but one hand is perfectly normal with a full range of motion and the other hand is a pirate hook they each serve their own purpose in their own way 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subscribers who use my link will get four extra months completely free now that's a deal thanks again to private internet access for sponsoring this video now let's get back to talking about Wheatley that's right the core of my core is this beautiful 3.4 inch circular LCD it looks odd but it's not hard to use as far as a computer is concerned it's actually an 800 by 800 square display with a handy mini HDMI input and USB power connection now this unit has plenty of pixels to portray any of the personality core irises but that's only part of the equation Wheatley also has a very active Iris mechanism and while the in-game model just swaps out a texture whenever he adjusts his aperture I want a physical solution and while you can buy mechanical irises I need one that's fairly large which means that any off the shelf solution would be expensive and likely too heavy so I had to make my own now this is a solved design problem so I just used an online calculator popped in my necessary dimensions and I was almost there one side of the mechanism needs to be driven so I added a gear tooth profile along a 90 degree Arc that is driven by a smaller pinion gear that will be attached Servo now we need to figure out how to make the blades which is harder than it seems the more blades an iris has the thinner the bezel can be but the blades also have to be lightweight and rigid the issue here is that Wheatley has an incredibly thin bezel relative to his aperture size which should mean that I can just add more blades right well the blades also have to be incredibly thin as they stack on top of each other I settled in a 16 blade assembly which at only 0.2 millimeters thick per blade strikes a nice balance between bezel width and blade count which I want to keep down because they are a chore to make the mechanism of this type of Iris requires the blades to have opposing pins on either end the blade is too delicate to be printed with support material so I split each blade into two pieces one main blade with an integrated pin and an absolutely Tiny separate pin that's meant to be super glued into the matching hole is this silly maybe does it work I'm happy with it actually and if you have any ideas how to make this kind of blade assembly easier I would love to know so please leave a comment all right let's walk back through the whole eye assembly first there's the outer eyepiece which has bores for the blades to rotate in then there's the stack of 16 blades followed by The Driven slot ring then we've got an adapter plate that keeps the driven ring from falling out and after that comes the LCD itself and another retaining piece that holds the LCD and provides a mounting point for the Iris Drive Servo the rear of this piece has a matching hole profile so I can mount the LCD driver board now behind all of this we have the next major piece which has integrated standoffs that provide clearance for the driver and mounting Hub and more standoffs for a raspberry pi02w and mounting holes for two three watt speakers because the LCD driver board has an integrated audio amplifier so when it's attached via this mini HDMI cable to the pi I've got Audio and Video in one tidy package now wheatley's inner eye needs to pan and tilt as well so the eye assembly is supported by an aluminum universal joint now to drive this motion there are two rotating blocks aligned with the axis of the U-joint this way the push rods that actuate the mechanism are decoupled which means that I can pan without affecting tilts at all in the Portal 2 commentary valve said that wheatley's eyelids were mechanically impossible in this case impossible is just a matter of perspective wait these eyelids aren't mechanically magical but if they were designed as they appear in the game they would peek above his face ring so the trick to solving this problem isn't that complicated if the design were to be circular and rotating about his Central axis the eyelids would peek above the face immediately we can help this by reducing the profile of the eyelid to just barely cover the eye hole but that's only part of the solution if we want to fully open the eyelids while keeping them hidden behind the ring all you have to do is reduce the length of the eyelid arms to be less than or equal to the radius the face ring this brings the axis of the eyelid rotation forward but that's not a problem so now we can rotate the eyelid to fully hide them within the ring z-valve was that so hard now in the game model wheatley's face is driven by a practical mechanism called a Stuart platform which is a pretty cool motion platform that allows for translation in three axes and rotation about those same axes Wheatley is highly expressive so this is a great plausible explanation for how he could move if it weren't for a few problems see two of the translation axes aren't used as wheatley's face doesn't move straight up or down or left and right and lastly the rotation about this axis is redundant as well his face does twist all Stuart platforms have fairly limited rotation until it starts to intersect itself so there has to be a separate motor to allow his face to fully rotate which happens to be the only clearly modeled motor in his design also the platform definitely gets in the way of the eyelids in this case so I've ditched the Stuart platform for my own design which allows for panning tilting and popping in and out the pan and tilt motions are driven by separate servos just like the inner eye mechanism but bigger a push rod connects to a swivel aligned with a universal joint and the servos are mounted on a plate toward the rear now to add this ability I designed the whole eye and face assembly to rest on two linear bearings that ride on six millimeter shafts that fit into a larger rotating component the third Servo here is what drives the entire eye and face assembly in and out so at Max extension his face just barely clears the inner shells and when fully retracted he pulls in six millimeters alright so that might not sound like a lot but it was really tight to cram this mechanism inside because the thickness of all the motors and components limits how much I can retract in order for wheatley's face to be able to twist I mounted the linear motion shafts inside a larger tube component which itself rests on two large bearings that are spaced apart now there's another gear mounted at the rear which meshes with a matching gear attached to another Servo mounted on the gimbal wheatley's inner body can fully rotate within the outer shells which is one of the most complex aspects of his motion that requires a fundamental redesign of his chassis compared to the game which doesn't really exist if his whole inner body can fully rotate that means the outer shell bills aren't fixed relative to each other this gets even weirder if you consider how he'd move while attached to a management rail arm or a docking port because that attachment is made to his inner body which means it's fixed in place so the motors let's just assume these discs are motorized would spin the outer shells so the rigid attachment needs to be made to the outer shells and locked together but how there isn't room for a central shaft as that would block the internal face assembly and if that were adjusted to have a large opening to allow that assembly to move it still wouldn't be a solution as this structural element has to allow clearance for the entire inner body to rotate now this wouldn't look right at all so I split the difference and the solution actually solves another mechanical Oddity in wheatley's design these sliding Arc segments which are pushed by his face at first glance they seem fine but their axes of rotation intersect which means they would clip through each other at the rear but since the loss of physics don't apply in video games they don't but I need to figure a way to make this work so I decided to make the vertical Arc move accurately since it's the more visible piece and I designed it with a small flange that will ride in these curved slotted pieces which mounts to this stainless steel bracket in the front and a composite plate near the rear of the gimbal these two plates not only support the arc assembly but the inner shell quarters as well Each of which rests on a little flange right here and screen in at the back but what about the other Arc well because the horizontal Arc aligns with wheatley's pitch axis I decided that it should be rigid and act as the supporting element that holds everything in place to do this I extend the arc outside his frame trying to strike a balance between keeping it minimal while sturdy driving the pitch axis is handled by this beefier Servo with a 3-2 reduction mounted on the gimbal which as part of the inner assembly contains all of the motors so far but we need to power and communicate with the servos that drive the handle mechanisms so how do we do that without the wires getting snagged as he rotates solution this little thingamajigger right here this is a slip ring and allows for a rotating electrical joint to pass power the little bearing in the slip ring is too small for my liking so the slip ring is recessed and fits snugly within the gimbal in a much larger 30 millimeter bearing takes the load now the wires can then feed through this slot on the outer frame and then up or down to their respective servos which Drive the handles with these handles basically act as eyebrows so to make them responsive each handle mechanism is driven by one small smart Servo it has a little nylon pulley that connects to the cutest timing belt you've ever seen seriously and love these things these Wii timing belts attach to another large pulley in a two to one reduction as affixed to the shaft that rests in the lever arm of the handle this whole handle mechanism rests on an aluminum plate that holds the servo and the bearing for the shaft the plates attach to the chassis via two 20 millimeter spacers and there's a matching plate and bearing on the other side of the assembly but those are idlers the whole assembly is driven only on the right side now this whole Arrangement is another tight fit as the inner assembly has to rotate past the handle mechanisms which it does with just a couple millimeters to spare I designed wheatley's outer shells as monolithic pieces where the ports for the handles and large side rings are integrated each shell half screws into the horizontal Arc assembly via these four holes now wheatley's game model doesn't have any visible screws but adding external holes to the chamfered ring here makes assembly a breeze and I like the extra bit of visual detail plus I've already modified this chassis anyway so I might as well make my life and theoretically your life if you ever build a Wheatley easier too now I think that's looking pretty good but there's still a lot more design work to do if you have more questions about the mechanical assembly let me know I'll talk more about the electronics in the next video when I put them together and yes I'm also making a management rail for him too so subscribe to see the next update thanks for watching and special thanks to my patreon supporters cutting plays games I salute you

Channel: Mr. Volt

Views: 719,509

Keywords: Portal 2, Wheatley, Animatronic

Id: XfGo1gua77U

Length: 14min 2sec (842 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 19 2023