Originally designed by Lee Adams, the Animatronic figure is perhaps the best known (and most often parodied) element of Disney presentation.

Initially, the Animatronic project was started as a private enterprise within the Disney company, for a planned traveling exhibit featuring a number of figurines. One of these figurines was intended to dance automatically, following a filmed routine by Buddy Eb-sen. This `Dancing Man´ was controlled via a series of wires, cams and motors which `pushed´ the limbs as a control arm moved into and out of the pits in the cam. While great to look at, this was hard to program, and movement cycles were limited by the cam circumference. As the figure was not synchronized to a soundtrack, it cannot be considered to be the first Audio Animatronic. This distinction is given to the Squid from the movie production 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, whose control system was digital in the sense that the pumps that control individual tentacles could be turned on and off to cause movement.

The first truly synchronized Animatronics were built in 1963, as part of the Enchanted Tiki Room and the surrounding area. Originally, the figure was connected to an audio track, birdsong would be played and the presence of an audio signal would activate the reed which controlled the bird´s bill. (Author´s Note, this system seems to be very similar to a technology developed by Ron Field in the 1950´s for his show Telegoons, but there appears to have been no communication between the two groups.) A later advance-ment saw sine waves recorded on a separate tape to control the motors (on/off to match with the tone). In those days, the system was entirely pneumatic, and could only man-age on and off (nothing in between). A further revision was carried out for what we now know as the Carousel of Progress. In this situation, the volume of the tone controlled the voltage, so varying volumes could alter the position more precisely. A combination of the analog and digital techniques were used where necessary.

The programming of these devices was complex - a series of potentiometers and joy-sticks would be used to control the motion, with the tones recorded onto 35mm mag-netic stock, the same used to dub motion pictures. One action would be recorded on each reel, before being mixed onto one master reel, and carefully synched to the rest of the presentation. Another control unit at the time was a bulky harness worn by the pro-grammer, that would convert any movement into the requisite data, although this re-quired a lot of practice to operate.

Later revisions saw declassified NASA technology employed to allow ten actions to be recorded onto one track by using different tone frequencies that would not interfere with one another. Some care needed to be taken, as in the Carousel show some signals were multiplexed (they controlled more than one event, depending on what point the show was at).

A further improvement was made to remove the overly `robotic´ nature of the move-ments. Originally, the sudden stopping of the motion signal gave a noticeable judder, particularly noticeable on the Mr Johnson figure from Mission to Mars in Disneyland, whose arm flew clean off! The new system, known as compliance, set the end point be-yond the desired point, and gradually cut the power instead of the previous cut. This removes the judder, but at the cost of slightly slowing down the motion, and limiting the speed at which the direction of motion can be changed.

As technology has progressed, the degree of precision of the figures has improved (love him or hate him, Stitch is a technical marvel). Programming the systems is now a little easier due to improved computer technology, but is still one of the most time-consuming tasks in ride design. By way of a bonus, let me share a WDI video about the subject.

Photos by Tasha S.